Brain injury unlocked Dahl’s dark creativity
The macabre workings of Roald Dahl’s mind, which manifested themselves in the grotesque villains of his children’s stories, may owe as much to chance as his genius.
The author’s doctor believes that the cruel aunts of James and the Giant Peach and the misanthropic title characters in The Twits might never have entered Dahl’s work had he not suffered a serious head injury during World War II.
The author liked to tell friends that his creativity began after a ‘‘big bang on the head’’ when he crashed his Gloster Gladiator fighter in the desert in Libya in 1940, but most people assumed he was being fanciful.
Professor Tom Solomon, who became friends with Dahl when he treated the writer in the last three weeks of life in 1990, believes that Dahl’s story was correct, albeit for the wrong reasons.
Solomon, who is now a specialist in neurology at the University of Liverpool, said Dahl liked the idea of sudden artistic output syndrome, a condition in which someone with no interest in art suddenly becomes prolific after suffering brain damage.
Evidence of Dahl’s creativity in childhood letters and stories suggests that he did not have the condition, but Solomon believes that the writer damaged a part of his brain that controlled inhibition.
‘‘I think the bash on the head may have just tipped things,’’ he said at Cheltenham Literature Festival.
‘‘I don’t think he had sudden artistic output syndrome. I think he damaged the frontal lobe – that’s the bit that inhibits you. So he could write things that other people wouldn’t write.’’
Solomon said that while other people might have entertained thoughts about horrible aunts being squashed to death by a giant peach, or a sadistic husband who tricks his wife into thinking that she has a shrinking disease, they would keep them private.
‘‘There was a fearlessness to his writing. He wrote things that others would not have done.’’
Frontal lobe damage might also explain Dahl’s cantankerous reputation and occasional outbursts, Solomon said.
Although Dahl’s dark style was now celebrated, it was ‘‘hugely controversial’’ when his stories first appeared, he said. ‘‘Publishers wouldn’t publish it, and school librarians wouldn’t have them.’’
Solomon obtained permission from the author’s estate to publish his recollections in his book Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Medicine, the royalties from which will go to Dahl’s favourite charities.
The book observes that Dahl was irreverent to the last, writing filthy limericks to try to shock some of his doctors.
Dahl’s capacity for caustic remarks was undiminished in the last weeks of his life, Solomon said.
He treated Dahl at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford in 1990, and recalled him saying that he had met many other writers, who were ‘‘mostly a dull bunch’’.
Dahl spoke of his disappointment when he met C S Forester, author of the Hornblower novels. ‘‘I loved his work . . . but he was such an ordinary-looking man.’’
Dahl said Norman Mailer was ‘‘a fine writer but a terrible bore to meet’’, and Thomas Mann had ‘‘no spark at all’’.
John Steinbeck was ‘‘usually drunk’’, while Evelyn Waugh was ‘‘insufferable’’.
Asked about authors who were not disappointing in the flesh, Dahl talked about Ernest Hemingway. ‘‘He was not much fun to be with, but I had such respect and love of his work that I did not mind.’’
Dahl also observed that his friend Ian Fleming, with whom he collaborated on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, was the opposite of Hemingway. ‘‘Very witty, extroverted, a sybarite . . . People forget how well he wrote.’’