Tuesday, 1 April 2008

Stand Well Back...

I'm in a really black mood and I'm just about ready to explode...
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dick....have you been eating kebabs ?

1 April 2008 at 19:58
AxmxZ said...

*takes cover*

1 April 2008 at 20:54
Selena Dreamy said...

I have often studied in retrospect the phases of a writer’s evolution, and I’m always convinced anew that fate must have willed that a man or a woman should determine to consign their entire lives to the capricious vagaries of the pen. Time was, when literary agents and publishers descended on writers, signing up a whole tranche of authors, many of whom received major advances for outlines of novels they had barely begun.

Now they behave like Pontius Pilate.

And at this moment, I am certain, Richard, you feel like the most neglected, in fact detested man in the United Kingdom - which, combined with the brainless inanities of the “open office”, is perfectly reasonable. You're told what to do, what to aspire to. But it involves being a fake version of yourself. Besides, a writer lives in a completely different time frame, completely isolate from the rest of his fellow men. I don’t even answer the phone when I'm engaged. I am terrified of losing “it“. And so it is but a question of knowing whether you accept to be defeated. For I, indeed, refuse to believe that there are no more marathon men in the realm of letters. And I want you to be as enduring as Virgil, as subtle as Kurt Vonnegut, as amusing as Wodehouse, as irreverent as Selena Dreamy, and as resilient as the great, late Henry Miller.


With no one to please except himself, he settled in Paris, and wrote of nothing but his own frustration and the irrepressible desire to be a published author. And this alone, combined with the ruthless struggle for survival, determined the features of an entirely new literary age. The man, single-handedly, created a genre. And for me, The Rosy Crucifixion, and The Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer encapsulate the full drama of the obsessiveness and tragedies which can befall a writer. The most enduring, lively, fascinating, testimony, indeed, to a writer’s struggle and determination to succeed. It’s been an abiding, humane, warm, loving, laughing and enchanted companion, whenever I needed tearful confirmation.

Let’s face it Richard, the real slaughter is about to begin. A handful only can survive. But if, to use an absurd hypothesis, everyone should abandon you, I shall be the last to do so...

Dreamy

1 April 2008 at 21:23
Uncle Dick Madeley said...

Twitch, again thanks. And no, I haven't eaten kebabs. I have a phobia about having needles near meat.

Ax, you should. I'm still not calm.

Selena, that's such a generous reply to so short an email. I really don't know what to say. I'm touched and I agree with everything you say. I've been learning a little French slowly these last few months and a move to Paris would make me very happy. We should hire a bus and transport the lot of us over there.

2 April 2008 at 00:05

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