On Monday two weeks ago a long awaited obituary of my 92-year old friend the late John Atkins was published in the Guardian. I have been lucky to have known John for many years. He encouraged my writing and even tried to persuade his publisher in the late 70's to publish my work albeit to no avail. Since then he was a constant mentor and I learned a lot about literature from him. I managed to read his final published work, The Golden Imp and discuss it with him. This was a minor miracle for me as I am always busy doing lots of rushing around and rarely complete novels.
The Golden Imp was written in a deliberately antiquated style reminiscent of somewhere like Norfolk in the 20' & 30's. When I told him the ending was not so happy as I would have hoped he said for me to look again as all was not as it seemed.
John had a lot of books published from the early 40's through to the 80's. He also wrote some works that never saw light of day - one was a history of British literature which his publisher asked him to write and afterwards reneged on publishing. Another, which we shall call 'Kirby' (after its hero) was about a band of strange characters who get mixed up in some adventures on the multiverse.
John spent a lifetime looking at the strange. He was a keen follower of the publication about the paranormal - Fortean Times. This led him to have some communication with Ken Campbell whose interest were in a similar dimension. I was fortunate to see the two of them in this dimension discussing other dimensions outside a cafe in the west end. I translated the photo I took of them there into 2 oils, one fairly straight and the second where they became demonic witha version of Ken becoming an alien and the spirit of Dylan Thomas, a friend of John's when he used to edit a literary magazine, appears as a red linear form smoking whorls of smoke whorling up in the shape of a welsh dragon.
John's literary connections included a great admiration for the work of J.B.Priestly about whom he did a biography. In Time and the Conways Priestly plays with ideas about precognition which he got from the work An Experiment in Time by J.W.Dunne.His biog on Graham Greene was not well received by the author as it contained truths that Greene had persuaded his official biographer not to divulge.
His turn on George Orwell must have been well informed, as they worked together on the Tribune. A long-standing friend of Atkins is another Canongate author, J.B.Pick. The two of them co-wrote A Land Fit For 'eros just after the 2nd world war. They used to meet when John was on frequent AWOLs with a small group of men John referred to as 'anarchists'. Although I think John's anarchy was more his literary penchants and his habit of encouraging outsiders like me to get on with our work despite being constantly ignored, I think his time with this group of men did give him the idea for 'Kirby'. Pick did comment after Atkin's death however that every where John had spent time teaching during his 30 years in various foreign shore seemed to have a revolution shortly after he left.
I just remember John's sense of fun, his never being overawed by any writer's work his ability to explain literary mores to me simply so I could get a better take on things. We once embarked on a joint venture where I was to portray him as all the 26 parts in a poetic alphabet, but we had to stop after we had done about 4 when I took up a day job. with the services of a good publisher I am sure John's work would have been greeted by a much wider audience.
