Notes on a crisis

On seeing James Lasdun in conversation at London Review Bookshop with Deputy Literary Editor, The Sunday Times, Robert Collins.

Part of the problem of going to see James Lasdun talk about his memoir, an account of a 5-year ordeal at the hands of a cyber-stalker, a former creative writing student, called Nasreen in the book, is that you spend an unnecessary amount of time wondering if she's in the audience. You look around. Anyone in a hat, in sunglasses, or a Macintosh coat (other raincoats are available) is immediately suspicious. And then you think, would she? Could she? When asked whether the 'terrorism' Lasdun is being subjected to is still going on, he replies that the case is with the Hate Crimes Unit of the police department, that he hasn't heard from Nasreen since August 2012, and he fully expects her to make her return and respond to the book. It's noted that she could end up writing her version of the events he describes.

Lasdun's memoir, Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked, may detail the endless emails, online abuse and reputation smearing he endured after a misunderstanding with Nasreen, but it is far from a tell-all salacious celebrity memoir. It intelligently discusses the nature of art and life, of grief and mortality, of the writer's role as documentarian, and of cyber-bullying, which is a hot button topic at the moment, given the abuse that Mary Beard recently suffered on Twitter, given the countless stories of teenagers being bullied on Facebook and this spilling out into violence and depression. The sad thing is, many of the audience questions fixate on the potential salaciousness of the memoir and Nasreen herself, rather than the bigger questions of online responsibility, of the meshing together of life and art and if Lasdun accidentally/purposefully achieved the thing he was initially accused of - stealing Nasreen's life to spin into book sales.

The first thing Lasdun addresses is whether the book is one beautiful hoax, if he invented this perfect story in order to write it. He says it's not a hoax or a glorious piece of meta-fiction. In fact, given the number of lives it has adversly affected, mostly his, he seems to take offence to the accusation. I'm sure it's not the first time he's been asked that. On the internet and how easy it is to slander someone online, and how difficult it is to get slander removed from various sites, and how the whole ordeal turned him into a vain and obsessive self-Googler, Lasdun notes that 'one of the things about the internet is that it's very conducive to paranoia... your internet self is not what you control. It's what other people control. And it's your reputation.'

On whether writing about Nasreen was cathartic, he says, 'In the process of writing about her, my reinvention of her pulled me through something'. Lasdun talks about Nasreen with little passion. He does not see her as suffering from any disorder. He sees her actions as entirely malicious. I wonder, during the discussion, whether the onslaught he has gone through and the lack of compassion that will inevitably cause, has taken away any insight into who she really is. He has to almost turn her into a monster in order to get through it, in order to write about it. His original subtitle for the book was 'Notes on a crisis'. Because he felt like he was in crisis. He felt like he was going mad, like no one could possibly understand or would empathise with him. The only time he offers Nasreen any compassion is when he talks about her writing, saying 'What a sad waste this has been. What a pity she didn't finish the novel she was writing.' He is asked whether this book is his revenge, something he denies, saying that throughout the memoir, he tries to empathise with her. There is a degree of self-reflection in the book, looking inwards to see what he might have done to cause this reaction from Nasreen. Interestingly, though, Lasdun hardly quotes himself. We do not see his email replies in the stark fashion we see hers, perversely she is technically now published, and we do not know the words and inflections he uses, the possible misintepretations that might occur from a sent email.

I ask a question about cyber-bullying and about online abuse and Lasdun talks about how he feels a degree of empathy towards people like Mary Beard who publicly go through what he has. He touches on the problem with discourse via email. I want to probe further because I've sent and received emails and read them with my own tones and inflections and seen into them attitudes and nuances that the author didn't intend. I've sounded angry or upset when I haven't meant to. The key moment for me in the book is when Nasreen appears to be getting a kick out of what she's doing: 'I hope I'm scaring you slightly. That would be exciting.' It's this stripping away of culpability because it's online, there's no face-to-face interaction, and you can fling anything out into the ether, seemingly without responsibility. And it's this that makes the book so compelling to me.

Before I go, though, two other things of note about last night's fascinating talk: 1) a man has come to the talk because he has been accused of being a stalker in the past. Lasdun defines stalking as 'anyone who is imposing themselves on another person against their wishes...' and 2) a man in the audience admits to also suffering a similar campaign of email abuse from Nasreen, counting upwards of 2,600 emails sent during that particular campaign.

All in all, an interesting, if not very revealing chat with a man who seems genuinely moved and disturbed by the whole experience, on a compelling subject matter. And if Nasreen was there, she certainly didn't announce it.

Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked by James Lasdun is out now on Jonathan Cape

Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked review