KEITH ROBERTS: a remembrance

I suppose that for a period from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s I knew Keith Roberts as well as he would allow anyone to know him. This is a personal recollection of a period in my life that delivered many unexpected pleasures and, ultimately, sadness. Later might be the time for a more thorough account of my experiences with Keith, for now though, this will have to do. I first met Keith when I travelled with a few science fiction reading friends to Henley on Thames specifically to meet him. The result of that meeting was the formation of Kerosina Publications, a small publishing company that went on to publish three of Keith's books, Kaeti & Company, Grainne (a wonderful and little known novel, that to my mind is second only to Pavane) and The Road to Paradise, and a number of shorter works including an emotive collection of verse, A Heron Caught in Weeds. Dealing with Keith was never easy. He had a problem with the mainstream London publishers, whom he believed had cheated him of royalties over a long period through fraudulent accounting practices. He had a problem with publishers' editors, who were apparently all "idiots" and he had a problem with book reviewers who, he felt, couldn't be bothered to really understand his work. There was always the risk that his feelings towards publishers in general would infect our relationship with him. Keith was subject to sudden mood swings. He would change from bright and cheerful to thunderously depressed with the space of minutes, and when this happened he would become withdrawn and totally uncommunicative. He may also have had self destructive tendencies. On a number of occasions I received late night 'phone calls from him declaring that he was going to end it all. I would make the dash from my home near Salisbury to Henley, where he lived in some squalor in a rented room, and talk him (or more properly listen to him) through the night as he unburdened himself. I was left with the feeling that the idea of self-destruction appealed to him, but that the requisite courage was never quite there. For all this Keith could be a good companion. He liked nothing better than sitting and yarning in a favourite pub, downing pint after pint of good bitter and smoking heavily. He was a man who's personal experiences were limited, he never travelled the world or sought adventure, but who's world view was coloured by erudition and arcane knowledge. Most of all he was in love with the English landscape, a love he lived and breathed and that made him the man he was. More specifically he was in love with Dorset, the magical county that provided inspiration for some of his best work. Keith's stature as a writer was nowhere near what it should have been. This was something that fed his bitterness. As a matter of fact he was probably, along with Brian Aldiss and J. G. Ballard, one of the three finest writers to emerge from British science fiction in the second half of the twentieth century. He was what is often called "a writer's writer". His peers, including literary giants such as Anthony Burgess and Kingsley Amis, recognised his genius, but to the world at large he was a secret. Soon after we first met Keith, we were warned by one of the few people with whom he'd had a long-standing friendship, that becoming too friendly with him was a mistake, because Keith couldn't deal with friendship, or any other kind of close relationship. He would, we were told, always turn on those who befriended him. Sad to say, he did. Despite problems, for the time I knew him well Keith was a friend I valued. The friendship was all but destroyed, now the man is dead and all that's left is a finite and impressive, though little known and undervalued, body of work. Jim Goddard 10th October, 2000