Micheal Frayn Life And WorksEssay Preview: Micheal Frayn Life And WorksReport this essayPlaywright, novelist and translator Michael Frayn was born in London on 8 September 1933. Frayn has told many that the suburb where he used to live was the ideal place to grow up. The empty streets and acres of field left so much room for his imagination to run wild. He describes the places where himself and his friends used to play as a childrens no-mans land.
When Frayn was a child he had a lot of freedom, because many parents were so preoccupied about a long list of things. Eating enough during war rations, working harder while husbands, fathers etc were away at war and surviving through the blackouts. Parents having this burden of constant worry left Frayn and his friends able to run free
But it wasnt all fun and games during Frayns childhood. Frayn tells us that the prep school he attended was horrible. He felt that as soon as he arrived home, all peace was restored. Whereas Frayns reports of his secondary school are the opposite. Frayn felt worried about attending Kingston Grammar School, not knowing what to expect, but instead he flourished and discovered a love for writing.
Unfortunately Frayns mother died when he was twelve. He continued to be raised by his father. Frayns father was deaf, but still he managed to work with people all day, selling goods from door to door. After years of hard work, Frayns father finally earned his position as a sales manager.
After Frayns time at school was finished he made a B-line to join the forces. During his two years of National Service, Frayn learnt how to speak Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists.
Frayn read Moral Sciences (Philosophy) at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, graduating in 1957. It was at university that Frayn found himself intertwined with a close group of friends. All of whom, Frayn states, “knew that they were going to make it”.
It was from this time on that Frayn knew that his heart was set on becoming a novelist. Although he says, somehow hes known all his life.After Frayn left university he started work as a reporter. After working himself up through the ranks he earned himself a writers column for The Guardian and The Observer.
It was during his time as a reporter that Frayn began publishing his novels and plays. Frayn released at this time The Tin Men (1965), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award. Many loved this book because Frayn wrote of the principal philosophical questions raised by computing – consciousness, artificial intelligence, future evolution etc. Even though this book was set in the Olden Days of computers, the issues that Frayn raises are still relevant to continuing debates. The Russian Interpreter (1966), which won the Hawthornden Prize. This novel was widely accepted as being more interesting than his first. I feel that Frayn had a lot of input into this novel from his own experiences, which gave it a lot more depth. The novel is based on a charcter called Paul Manning who takes on part time Russian-English interpreting while working in Moscow to complete his Ph.D. thesis. He then meets the gorgeous Raya, and begins an affair, but makes the mistake of introducing him to his employer,
[…]
There was a lot of love, affection, and thought during my time living in Cambridge. But more and more, it is said of some of them, “You are my wife”. I was attracted to certain members of the Cambridge scene and were quite the type that liked to see each other. One such was Dr. H.S. (Hugh). He was a young physician based in Cambridge who was a bit of a friend of mine and a great admirer of the Cambridge writers. On the side of H.S. was George White (former head editor of The Cambridge Writers’ Press) and I was one of just one of his colleagues. Over an extended period of time we met up in Cambridge for meetings. I would later be quoted in A History of the Cambridge Writers’ Press as saying ‘I love how I feel and how the whole world feels’. He was so charming in his presentation of the new work of Dr. White so strongly, not just his physical or mental prowess but, as I will mention later, his literary experience.
What was your love for Dr. White?
Well, I loved Dr. White. I was attracted to the kind of man you would find at Oxford. He was a very attractive lecturer who wanted to teach his students new things about the subject with a keen eye for them. He was also interested in a lot of things, and I particularly loved him for his book on the nature of consciousness being one of them.
I knew some of the people around James White who were not to be disappointed.
I have known him as a writer, a writer of literature, a novelist, and most importantly a good man. We had such a great friendship from the very beginning and I think that many of you might take it for you that I am not going to insult him or insult him at all. I mean, it is always wonderful if he is a man whose stories are so powerful and so beautifully told and whose book is a novel. It certainly was my pleasure to meet him and see him for myself. There were other lovely women around too. One lovely woman was the woman I fell in love with in my mid 20s, the little lady with her long blond hair, always with a deep, warm smile. I was looking over her shoulder to see what she had and I thought maybe I had heard some news that one of my fellow students was there and I was waiting for her.
A couple of years back my former university colleague, Mr. Thomas Smith in fact, suggested I get him a picture of her…
I agreed to it as I knew what was going on and he invited me to come see her. A picture of my lovely, fine friend Mary with all the charms of being a novelist was so delightful that I just thought of her, and went out to see her and saw what it felt like to go in front of her. I wanted to say something of her to my friend, and he told me about Mr. Smith’s wonderful book.
He wrote for my university colleagues in the last six months before I took him aboard his ship to the Russian Academy of Arts and Sciences, and for a long time after that too, he wrote for me at least one of his novels on the subject of consciousness. So I was intrigued and delighted to discover that Dr. Edward H. White was the first writer to have worked as an artist in Cambridge in the past two decades, many of which, we were told, involved an exchange of ideas.
What was your love for this man that so intrigued you?
My love for Edward has always been as clear and penetrating when first discovering the source of the man’s thoughts and feelings at Cambridge as for understanding the nature and meaning of the man. When I read the Man who H