Flirtatious, foul-mouthed and 'incredibly clever': Remembering writer Al Alvarez

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Alfred Alvarez was flirty, funny, adventurous, charming — and never, ever boring, says his friend and former colleague Alexandra Pringle. 

The prolific English poet, critic and non-fiction author died this week from viral pneumonia. He was 90. 

As a critic, he played a role in shaping the modern poetic cannon, helping to propel the careers of writers like Sylvia Plath and her then-husband Ted Hughes.

As a writer, he penned deft and thoughtful prose about anything that fascinated him, from poker and rock climbing, to divorce and suicide. 

Pringle, the editor-in-chief of Bloomsbury Publishing, spoke to As It Happens host Carol Off about Alvarez's life and legacy. Here is part of their conversation. 

You met him 20 years ago, is that right?

Yes, I did. Soon after I joined Bloomsbury Publishing and we were publishing a book that he did ... and he sort of swaggered into our lives.

And what were your impressions, your first impressions?

I was just immediately captivated by him. I'm afraid that I have a tremendous weakness for funny men. And there he was, very short, had a strange kind of barrel chest, a big nose and a big mouth. And he made me laugh immediately.

And he was, what, 70 at the time?

He was in his early 70s, yes, and I was in my late 40s. (chuckles) And he was happily married and, I think, in a wonderful phase of his life.

He was garrulous, but never boring. And it was like life was a fight and a round of fun all the time for him.- Alexandra Pringle, Bloomsbury Publishing

Charismatic, attractive — that's what others have said. 

Yes, absolutely. He was flirtatious. He was foul-mouthed. He was incredibly clever. He was garrulous, but never boring. And it was like life was a fight and a round of fun all the time for him.

He was also a poet, a poetry editor and, of course, what he was able to do for the careers of some very important poets when they were younger, most notably Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. What did he mean for their careers?

I think that for all poets then and now, their lives are spent largely in the wilderness. And Al had this very unusual job on the Observer, because he was a poetry critic and a poetry editor, and he had the freedom to publish poetry in a national newspaper, which was a rather remarkable thing. And he published many of the very famous names of the time.

But he got a real buzz out of publishing new names.

He wasn't that interested in English poetry, which I think he thought was too genteel. So Ted Hughes was an unusual one. I think he felt that the American poets, people like Robert Lowell, were the most exciting because they had a kind of energy, an anger and an ability to transmit grief and fury that the British poets on the whole didn't have.

So what he did was he just backed them. He published them. He got them heard in the world. And that was very, very precious.

He didn't just help them and get them published. These became the names of poets — including Thom Gunn and Geoffrey Hill, along with Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Peter Porter — these became names that students would study in school. This became The Alvarez Generation. These were the names of poets ... that were studied in your universities, is that right?

Yes. I think that great critics can change the fortunes, the lives of people, and the culture of a country rather, as for example, Clement Greenberg did with the American abstract expressionist painters of that same period. In a way, the poets that Al was championing were the equivalent of those painters.

I want to ask you a little bit about his relationship with Sylvia Plath, who died by suicide in 1963. What was his relationship with her?

He was a champion of hers, but he was also a close friend. She, in her unhappiness and her fury, turned to him. And I think that he felt that he had failed her because he was unable to step forward and help her in the ways that she had wanted, that she sought from him.

He, of course, had himself tried to commit suicide two years before Platt's own suicide. And perhaps it was all too close for him.

But I think he did feel it was a kind of failure in his life.

What effect did Sylvia Plath's suicide have on him?

Devastating. It was absolutely devastating. And I think in some ways he felt a little responsible for it. And he'd seen her so soon before she died.

What's extraordinary about him is that experience became material that he needed to write about, that whatever went on in his life, what he encountered, from poker to whatever, he would turn into extraordinary prose, didn't he? Which he also did with suicide. The Savage God: A Study of Suicide was something that people turned to to understand what leads someone to that.

Yes, and they still do. It's the classic book.

The wonderful thing about Al is that his interests were so various. They led to so many different books. As you said, mountain climbing, being on oil rigs, dreams and night time. You know, there were just so many different things that caught his eye.

And he had always this insane, manic energy. As he said he was an adrenaline junkie. And he talked about feeding his habit as "feeding the rat," which was the title of his book about mountaineering.

He also flew planes. You know, he gambled enormously through his life. That was one thing he never stopped. Though I think he did stop losing very large sums of money when he had settled down a bit. But, yeah, adrenaline fuelled him.

When was the last time you saw your friend?

I saw him about a year ago. By then he was in a wheelchair. He couldn't walk at all. He had a lovely carer who looked after him, as well as his wife Anne. 

We had a very early supper. He had had a stroke and, you know, he was pretty decrepit. But he was always funny about it. One of his lines was, "I'm past my sell by date."

There he was. He sat in his chair and he made me laugh as he always did.

If there is one particular memory that you cherish about your friendship with Al Alvarez, what is it?

It's the memory of the night that we celebrated the publication of his last book, Pond Life, which was a book about swimming in the Hampstead ponds, a book about aging and love and relinquishing life.

And there he was. He'd so not relinquished life. 

It was late and guests were starting to leave and he put some jazz on and stood up with his wife. And he could really hardly stand, but they swayed together, their fingers touching. And their love and their romance was absolutely palpable.

I remember sitting there and watching them and thinking, "This is the most romantic relationship in the world." And that's really how I shall always remember him.

Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview produced by Morgan Passi. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. 

Where to get help:

Canada Suicide Prevention Service: 1-833-456-4566 

In Quebec (French): Association québécoise de prévention du suicide: 1-866-APPELLE (1-866-277-3553)

If you're worried someone you know may be at risk of suicide, you should talk to them, says the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention.