A Life of Allegory

(2 of 2)
But something was wrong. "I never really felt myself to be a man," Morris says today, despite his pre-interview warning that "One thing I don't like to talk about is sex." In 1972 James underwent a sex-change op and became Jan. The gender switch made headlines around the world, and Morris wrote a bestselling 1974 book about it, Conundrum. Nowadays, hardly anybody brings up the subject. Morris can't tell if the change affected the writing. "There must be a difference, though not in my style. I once went back over all my work to see if the style had changed, and it wasn't apparent that it had. But I'd be a very boring writer if I hadn't become a woman. It has enriched my writing."

Morris' writing sprawls from book-length essays on the meaning of place (Venice, Wales, O Canada!, Manhattan '45) to serious works of history (notably the Pax Britannica trilogy, an ambitious three-part work on the fall of the British Empire) to a nonstop torrent of newspaper and magazine articles. Age has not slowed her step. In July she is covering the first direct Eurostar service of the summer from London to Avignon for the Financial Times. Then off on a summer cruise-ship lecture tour. In October she will be fêted at the New York Public Library for her 80th birthday.

Yet there will be no more books, save one. "I've been very ill," she says. "I had two brain surgeries earlier this year, so I'm sort of taking the year off. I'm much better now, thanks.

I can stand, walk, even drive a car. I have this Honda Civic Type R, a special, souped-up model with a very powerful engine. I've always loved fast cars, this one more than most of them. I even wrote it into Hav. It's in the scene in the tunnel [once the romantic principal route to Hav, but now sadly trackless and unused]. Oops, Elizabeth has just handed me a note. Shall I read it to you? It says, 'I'm going out to buy some superglue.' O.K. Well, now what were we talking about?"
Yes, that's the same Elizabeth who married James Morris in 1949 and had five children with him, four of whom survive. Elizabeth has remained superglued to her former husband's side through sex change, brain surgery, literary fame and near-constant travel. "We go to Trieste nearly every year," Morris says of that flavorful, heterogeneous Adriatic port. "It has haunted me more than anywhere else. It's the most allegoric city I know. I am Trieste. Trieste is me."

Trieste was also the subject of the 2001 book, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, that Morris once announced would be her last serious literary effort. Hav, she says, was an afterthought, but Trieste remains her official valedictory. "It's the best thing I've ever written, and I don't think I could do that again. I don't want to go downhill. There will be no more."

Morris fans, from Yalta to the Yukon, should not despair. "I have written a posthumous book of personal essays," she says. "Faber and Faber will publish it after I die. I just received the contract this morning. I'm calling it Allegorisings. Is that a word? Anyway, they don't awfully like the title at Faber. But the older I get the more I'm obsessed with allegory. Everybody knows what the world looks like these days. They've seen it on TV. So as a writer you have to be more transcendental, more allegorical. Nearly everything has more to it than meets the eye. Even my life." Pausanias, that ancient Greek connoisseur of myth and meaning, would be pleased. So would Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo. They're both mentioned in Hav, well before the allegorical tunnel.