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Anna Kavan (1901-1968) Anna Kavan was born Helen Emily Woods on April 10, 1901 in Cannes, France, of English parents. Brought up in Europe and California, Kavan lived all over the world before settling in London. She was married (and divorced) twice. Breeder of bulldogs, an interior decorator, and a talented painter (largely bizarre studies of tormented women), Kavan is best known for her writing (she was the author of 16 novels and five books of short stories). Her masterpiece is generally considered to be Ice (1967). Often described as a science fiction novel, Ice concerns a man’s search for an elusive girl, against the backdrop of nuclear war; a war that results in global destruction from walls of ice. Kavan became a heroin addict around 1926. Her addiction has been described as an attempt at self-medication for the intermittent fits of clinical depression she experienced throughout her life. Certainly, her daily use of heroin and amphetamines helped to fuel her productivity as a writer. She referred to her syringe as her “bazooka” and wrote a short autobiographical story entitled “Julia and the Bazooka” (1974). Here is an extract: “Julia likes the doctor as soon as she meets him. He is understanding and kind like the father she has imagined but never known. He does not want to take her syringe away. He says, ‘You’ve used it for years already and you’re none the worse. In fact you’d be far worse off without it.’ He trusts Julia, he know she is not irresponsible, she does not increase the dosage too much or experiment with new drugs.....In his opinion she is quite right to use the syringe, it is as essential to her as insulin to a diabetic. Without it she could not lead a normal existence, her life would be a shambles, but with its support she is conscientious and energetic, intelligent, friendly. She is most unlike the popular notion of a drug addict. Nobody could call her vicious.” (p.139) In real life, Kavan was to meet less sympathetic characters . When the British system of addiction control, allowing GP’s to prescribe heroin and cocaine to addicts, changed over to Consultant Psychiatrists and Drug Dependency Units. She met a rather different response. Her friend Rhys Davies describes the impact of this change on the novelist: “Racked with pain from a spinal disease, she, a seasoned addict well-known to the Home Office, was compelled to attend an appointed centre at regular periods for a session which to her was futile; fear that her supply of drugs would be withheld forced her on the journeys. She saw it all as disciplinary punishment. Her bazooka was their torpedo.” Her “bazooka”, complete with dose of heroin, was in her hand when she was found dead in her London home. Sixty-seven-years-old, she died of natural causes. |
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