Writer of clever, playful stories
CNovelist b February 19, 1948 d March 5, 2018
live Sinclair, who has died aged 70, described most of his work as ‘‘a fusion between tragedy and farce’’; he is best known for his prize-winning collections of short stories,
Sinclair’s writing is playful and erudite, full of knowing references to Chekhov, Kafka and popular culture. The title story of
features a mischievous debate on the links between Quentin Tarantino’s film
and the story of Davy Crockett. One character, Zaki Feldman, is a writer who reflects on a terrible review he once received. The reviewer says: ‘‘All the stories come with melancholia en suite.’’
The same could be said of Sinclair. His stories are full of tragedy, divorce, illness and death, the four horsemen of his apocalypse. Few, especially among the women, come out in one piece. But these stories are not grim. They are full of humour, sex and larger-than-life characters with more than a hint of the grotesque.
One story has a character called Mama Congo, several zombies and some New Orleans prostitutes; another begins with a rabbi who tries to rape a German au pair at a bar mitzvah; and a third features the real-life Kinky Friedman.
Sinclair had a terrific turn of phrase. One character refers to ‘‘some internal Switzerland, in the refrigerator he calls his heart’’. When he tells his lover that he is a non-believing Jew, she replies: ‘‘You’re getting the worst of both worlds, pogroms in this, no entry in the next.’’
The stories are both familiar and exotic. Sinclair’s characters end up in unlikely places, doing unlikely things. They move between the familiar landmarks of north London Jewry and more exotic landscapes: the Wild West, Israel, Peru. Sinclair rubbed these worlds together with unexpected results.
Clive John Sinclair was born in London. His father, David, was a furniture maker, and his mother Betty a housewife. When his father joined the army in 1939 he changed his name from Smolinsky to Sinclair: his son gave the name Joshua Smolinsky to a private detective who appears in several stories in the early books.
He grew up in Hendon and studied at the University of East Anglia, graduating in 1969. He completed his PhD there in 1983 and it was published as
a biographicalcritical study of Isaac Bashevis Singer and his brother, I J Singer. Jewish writers were important to him, whether from America, Eastern Europe or Israel.
In 1979 he published his first collection of short stories,
which won the Somerset Maugham Prize. The book includes a story told from the point of view of a giraffe in an Israeli zoo.
His second collection, was published in 1982. In
the concluding story, the government of a fictional Yiddish-speaking Jewish state commissions a writer to produce an official guide to the country as it concludes a deal with Hitler to sell uranium to Nazi Germany.
The 1980s and early 1990s were productive, with seven books in barely a decade. His reputation was at its height.In the tragic years that followed, between 1993 and 1996, he lost his parents, his wife, Fran, and his sister-in-law, Susan. He suffered renal failure and had a kidney transplant.
He described this dark period in a series of articles for later published as
(1998). His third and highly acclaimed collection of short stories,
was published in 1996 and was awarded the PEN/MacMillan Fiction Prize and the 1997 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize.
By Sinclair’s high standards, the next 20 years were less productive, with only three short books, though
the last published in his lifetime, was one of his best works. The stories were clever, funny and full of life, confirming his reputation as one of the outstanding British writers of his time.
He loved watching football, films (especially his beloved Westerns), was passionate about art and had a love-hate relationship with the radio soap opera
Despite his lugubrious voice, he was one of the funniest of men, hugely popular among his close circle of friends.
He found great happiness through his long relationship with the artist Haidee Becker, and his son, Seth. Both survive him. –