figuratio's Blog
May 13, 2018
Left Behind
Someone had left them there. Washed up on the bench at high tide and waiting for . . .
preservation? As evidence, perhaps?
A humble little collection, an oddity, sitting there as if they had every right, the
framed glasses on top of the leather sandals. Neatly arranged so, they could not have
accidentally fallen into place. Must have been arranged, carefully – lovingly? – placed, then
suddenly become ownerless. Strange, the detritus of human life that signals its absence.
Useful once, now become like driftwood . . .
Out to sea, a white yacht presses its progress north in the breeze, signalling its intent
by its full sails. Why are yachts white? Will it collide with a dead body, a detritus? An
owner?
Carved on the bench, “Jessie loves . . .”
There are weathered unreadable bits.
And, “I was here”.
It’s a wonder they haven’t fallen through the cracks, through the wooden slats of the
bench seat. But then, eventually, though close enough to touch, they must. A stronger
breeze would shift them – would send them in a brief final clatter on their downward journey. Like it did their owner perhaps. But it’s only fifteen knots now, not even twenty, and yet the yacht is already halfway across its horizon, sailing through its life carelessly.
A woman plays with her two children and a dog near the waterline and the gulls join
in. They dip in and out and cavort at odd angles or do whatever gulls do, now fast, now slow.
Her children are young and spirited. Their vanishing footprints chase them.
But no sign of an owner of glasses and sandals. No solitary walkers. No likely
suspects . . . couples, for instance, walking along the shoreline, barefoot with sandals and
hats held in hands and grey hairs and memories gone loose in the wind.
So, these are brown. The rims. Tortoiseshell, old fashioned. A man’s. The thick
convexity of them, smudged and unclear now, but with arms neatly folded, and facing up to
the clear blue sky, offering themselves up to heaven. No case; simply exposed to the
elements, the fifteen knot breezes, but high enough above the ground not to get buried yet in
shifting sands. Will the sun use their convexity to burn holes into the big-footed sandals
underneath them, as a final statement? Ashes to ashes, they say . . . reductio ad absurdum.
The woman and her children have already moved farther along the shoreline, their
silly dog giving chase. The yacht is almost out of sight now. Everything is going out of sight,
even the bright day as a newly formed cloud passes in front of its sun.
Time passes a sound behind.
“Look at that, will ye? Left ’em here yesterday, and they’re still here! Gord luv us,
matey! People are bloody honest, aren’t they?”
The tremulous owner with white hair and frailty to suit, redeems with his life his
belongings – beaming and happy to have found again what he had lost: his memory, and an
honesty in people.
Time to go home.
figuratio
September 2016
preservation? As evidence, perhaps?
A humble little collection, an oddity, sitting there as if they had every right, the
framed glasses on top of the leather sandals. Neatly arranged so, they could not have
accidentally fallen into place. Must have been arranged, carefully – lovingly? – placed, then
suddenly become ownerless. Strange, the detritus of human life that signals its absence.
Useful once, now become like driftwood . . .
Out to sea, a white yacht presses its progress north in the breeze, signalling its intent
by its full sails. Why are yachts white? Will it collide with a dead body, a detritus? An
owner?
Carved on the bench, “Jessie loves . . .”
There are weathered unreadable bits.
And, “I was here”.
It’s a wonder they haven’t fallen through the cracks, through the wooden slats of the
bench seat. But then, eventually, though close enough to touch, they must. A stronger
breeze would shift them – would send them in a brief final clatter on their downward journey. Like it did their owner perhaps. But it’s only fifteen knots now, not even twenty, and yet the yacht is already halfway across its horizon, sailing through its life carelessly.
A woman plays with her two children and a dog near the waterline and the gulls join
in. They dip in and out and cavort at odd angles or do whatever gulls do, now fast, now slow.
Her children are young and spirited. Their vanishing footprints chase them.
But no sign of an owner of glasses and sandals. No solitary walkers. No likely
suspects . . . couples, for instance, walking along the shoreline, barefoot with sandals and
hats held in hands and grey hairs and memories gone loose in the wind.
So, these are brown. The rims. Tortoiseshell, old fashioned. A man’s. The thick
convexity of them, smudged and unclear now, but with arms neatly folded, and facing up to
the clear blue sky, offering themselves up to heaven. No case; simply exposed to the
elements, the fifteen knot breezes, but high enough above the ground not to get buried yet in
shifting sands. Will the sun use their convexity to burn holes into the big-footed sandals
underneath them, as a final statement? Ashes to ashes, they say . . . reductio ad absurdum.
The woman and her children have already moved farther along the shoreline, their
silly dog giving chase. The yacht is almost out of sight now. Everything is going out of sight,
even the bright day as a newly formed cloud passes in front of its sun.
Time passes a sound behind.
“Look at that, will ye? Left ’em here yesterday, and they’re still here! Gord luv us,
matey! People are bloody honest, aren’t they?”
The tremulous owner with white hair and frailty to suit, redeems with his life his
belongings – beaming and happy to have found again what he had lost: his memory, and an
honesty in people.
Time to go home.
figuratio
September 2016
Jackhammer
Fifteen weeks and six days, and two-and-a-quarter hours, the calendar said.
Like a giant toothache.
In the mornings, the birds, shocked into arrhythmic flight, fluttered and flapped outside P_’s windows, their bird-brains in a panic. At night, after the workers climbed out like tired insects and went home, P_ could still hear the eighteen-point-three cycles per second fusillades in his mind, as clearly as he had in the daytime, when, over the usual sounds of the city, the granite protested its own destruction. The percussions reverberated in his mind as insistently as they had each day of the last fifteen weeks, six days, and two-and-a-quarter hours when, in bright air, they echoed off the blue-grey walls of the granite hole in the ground and in through the shut windows of his weatherboard house, beating like a heart in every room. Even the python had had enough, finding a way to silently escape the vibration in broad daylight, two weeks and four days ago, while P_ sat reading in the other room. Where it had got to, he could not say. It was not in the house. He had searched for three days then given up.
P_ would start on a sentence in the elastic tension of the in-between; something like, “Somebody must have made a false accusation . . .”, and then lose his train of thought, because of another staccato burst, and have to put the book down and try again later. But there wasn’t much to do about it. They had put a flyer in his letterbox saying it would be noisy, and apologising for the inconvenience, but the work had to be done and they hoped that the residents would understand.
That was that. There was nothing to sign, nothing to approve, nothing to do except wait for the machine. The smaller machines had long since come and gone: the trucks and excavators and bulldozers that had flattened the other weatherboard houses to prepare for the “Exciting New Development” that was promised by the signs on the hessian-covered wire fencing. It was a development that would be good for the city. So all around P_’s house, the smaller machines had worked ceaselessly day after day, clearing the area for the big machine until only a narrow strip led west, from P’s house to the street out at the front, now two blocks away. It formed a kind of narrow causeway, a tenuous connection to the rest of the world. Then, with the passing of the months, the excavation of bedrock came right up to the sides of this causeway. And not much later, the big machine had tunnelled underneath in several places, converting it into a grand viaduct with Gothic arches.
There was little to see from this viaduct, its narrow corridor being lined either side by some plywood sheeting up against wire fencing. But from his bedroom window that faced north, P_ had a dizzying, magnificent view. He could see the hole clearly. Its edge came right up, thrillingly flush with the sides of the house, so that if he opened his window and looked straight down, he could spit and see the spittle descend the twenty-two metres to the floor of the cavity.
Months passed, and the granite wound besieging P’_s house on all sides enlarged and deepened. “An excavator-mounted hydraulic jackhammer” was how someone once referred to it in conversation with P_. The jackhammer, at first a colossus – its knuckle originally higher than P_’s roof – now began to look more toy-like as it sank farther away from him. But its percussive sound had not changed, by some vagary of acoustics that P_ could never quite explain.
He now felt the jackhammer’s sound daily and nightly within himself; felt it like he once felt his heartbeat, like he once felt the blood rushing in his ears. These had been feelings that the sound now replaced. At night P_ could not tell, without direct observation, whether the machine was working or silent, for its sound was still there. So he had to look. And when he looked, if the machine was stopped, he couldn’t be certain it hadn’t stopped suddenly – stopped because he had looked – or perhaps had been stopped for some time and was simply lying in wait. But more often than not, the machine continued its devouring around the clock.
For night-work, they had put in floodlights, which cast a faint, warm and comforting illumination through P_’s windows, as the jackhammer foraged under the black night sky like a giant glow worm. At the east, south and west sides of the house, the drop was beginning to approach that of the north, approximately thirty-five metres. Each day and each night, P_ followed the jackhammer’s movements by observing them from the different windows of his house, going clockwise from his north facing bedroom window, around to the east, then south and west, and back to the north again – P_ via the other rooms, and the jackhammer via the viaduct’s Gothic arches.
One day, the workers left early. The rain had been constant and heavy the whole day, and the excavation’s pumps had been continuously draining water at full bore from the cavity’s base. But finally the rain had stopped, leaving an evening sky tinted blood-red, and a chilling breeze that swept over P_’s house and swirled in the vacuous spaces around it. From his bedroom window, P_ could make out, in the northeast corner, the zigzag access ladder of steel and timber. It clung to the concrete wall reinforcement and extended itself down to the base of the granite wound, fifty-six metres below surface level.
Something rose within P_. He felt its rise, a kind of answering call, a living urgent response to the measured bursts of the jackhammer’s sound that was so much a part of him, a part that had signalled to him for so long, that had enduringly enticed: the prospect of a wild and unpredictable closeness to a machine life, to share its vital rhythm, its fabulous power.
*
LONG SHOT FROM P_’S BEDROOM WINDOW, ANGLED DOWN INTO EXCAVATION BELOW. LATE EVENING.
Far below, amongst the glaucous puddles in the fading light, a figure made tiny by great distance moves on the floor of the excavation. There is at once an eagerness, and a trepidation in its movements, as if careful, while hurrying, not to have any accidents before reaching what appears to be its destination, a large (but toy-like, from this distance) excavator-mounted hydraulic jackhammer.
Some moments pass, when the figure is not visible. The usual city sounds are suppressed. Quiet remains.
CUT TO: LONG SHOT FROM NORTHERN RIM OF EXCAVATION, LOOKING SOUTH, AND ANGLED DOWN. LATE EVENING.
From deep within the granite cavity, issues a sudden flaring of light. It comes from floodlights that have been switched on, presumably by the lone figure who has gained unlawful access to the monstrous destruction site, which has no conclusion for itself in mind. Moments later, the throbbing of an engine is heard.
CAMERA PANS UPWARDS. P_’S HOUSE SLOWLY COMES INTO VIEW.
LATE EVENING. SOUND OF A LIGHT WIND BLOWING.
(The slow, steady throb of the engine in the excavation continues.)
Against the flare of a crimson sunset thrown up by passing rain clouds, the lamp black silhouette of P’_s house and viaduct is seen. The house is an inconsequential structure made marvellous and consequential by the fact of its support, which is in fact a granite pinnacle seventy three metres tall, but no wider than one metre at its apex. This pinnacle supports the rock platform on which the house stands, a platform two metres thick, and of area no greater than the house itself. Extending westwards from the house is the viaduct, its top surface of one-metre-thick rock, supported on a row of black Gothic arches seventy three metres tall. Scudding clouds and ripples of crimson light give the house a sense of flying through the air on its own, in an ecstasy borne of physical laws defied, an ecstasy made possible by the machine’s attentions.
CUT TO: FLOOR OF EXCAVATION LOOKING DOWN FROM NORTHERN RIM. LATE EVENING.
The silence and serenity of the preceding scene is inconsiderately shattered by the harsh metallic clanging of the jackhammer being operated. The arm of the machine moves up and down, selecting areas for the jackhammer to break up, roaming the surface of the granite. The noise echoes in the cavity, drowning out any human cries of elation that might have been heard. But from one side of the machine, the figure seen earlier emerges, clearly transported, for, as the jackhammer continues its percussions, apparently set to automatic, the figure lifts its arms high in jubilation, or perhaps veneration.
Incomprehensibly the human figure runs towards the giant jackhammer bit, enfolding it with arms in tight embrace.
CAMERA ZOOMS IN FOR CLOSE-UP.
There is blood everywhere, pools of it on the ground, sprays and splashes of it on the still-hammering machine. Droplets fly off in all directions. Something lies under the point of the mechanism’s bit, but is unrecognisable.
CUT TO: LONG SHOT AS BEFORE, OF SILHOUETTED HOUSE AND VIADUCT. DUSK.
(Machine’s sound becoming louder.)
FADE TO BLACK.
(Machine’s sound becoming louder still.)
figuratio
October 2016
Like a giant toothache.
In the mornings, the birds, shocked into arrhythmic flight, fluttered and flapped outside P_’s windows, their bird-brains in a panic. At night, after the workers climbed out like tired insects and went home, P_ could still hear the eighteen-point-three cycles per second fusillades in his mind, as clearly as he had in the daytime, when, over the usual sounds of the city, the granite protested its own destruction. The percussions reverberated in his mind as insistently as they had each day of the last fifteen weeks, six days, and two-and-a-quarter hours when, in bright air, they echoed off the blue-grey walls of the granite hole in the ground and in through the shut windows of his weatherboard house, beating like a heart in every room. Even the python had had enough, finding a way to silently escape the vibration in broad daylight, two weeks and four days ago, while P_ sat reading in the other room. Where it had got to, he could not say. It was not in the house. He had searched for three days then given up.
P_ would start on a sentence in the elastic tension of the in-between; something like, “Somebody must have made a false accusation . . .”, and then lose his train of thought, because of another staccato burst, and have to put the book down and try again later. But there wasn’t much to do about it. They had put a flyer in his letterbox saying it would be noisy, and apologising for the inconvenience, but the work had to be done and they hoped that the residents would understand.
That was that. There was nothing to sign, nothing to approve, nothing to do except wait for the machine. The smaller machines had long since come and gone: the trucks and excavators and bulldozers that had flattened the other weatherboard houses to prepare for the “Exciting New Development” that was promised by the signs on the hessian-covered wire fencing. It was a development that would be good for the city. So all around P_’s house, the smaller machines had worked ceaselessly day after day, clearing the area for the big machine until only a narrow strip led west, from P’s house to the street out at the front, now two blocks away. It formed a kind of narrow causeway, a tenuous connection to the rest of the world. Then, with the passing of the months, the excavation of bedrock came right up to the sides of this causeway. And not much later, the big machine had tunnelled underneath in several places, converting it into a grand viaduct with Gothic arches.
There was little to see from this viaduct, its narrow corridor being lined either side by some plywood sheeting up against wire fencing. But from his bedroom window that faced north, P_ had a dizzying, magnificent view. He could see the hole clearly. Its edge came right up, thrillingly flush with the sides of the house, so that if he opened his window and looked straight down, he could spit and see the spittle descend the twenty-two metres to the floor of the cavity.
Months passed, and the granite wound besieging P’_s house on all sides enlarged and deepened. “An excavator-mounted hydraulic jackhammer” was how someone once referred to it in conversation with P_. The jackhammer, at first a colossus – its knuckle originally higher than P_’s roof – now began to look more toy-like as it sank farther away from him. But its percussive sound had not changed, by some vagary of acoustics that P_ could never quite explain.
He now felt the jackhammer’s sound daily and nightly within himself; felt it like he once felt his heartbeat, like he once felt the blood rushing in his ears. These had been feelings that the sound now replaced. At night P_ could not tell, without direct observation, whether the machine was working or silent, for its sound was still there. So he had to look. And when he looked, if the machine was stopped, he couldn’t be certain it hadn’t stopped suddenly – stopped because he had looked – or perhaps had been stopped for some time and was simply lying in wait. But more often than not, the machine continued its devouring around the clock.
For night-work, they had put in floodlights, which cast a faint, warm and comforting illumination through P_’s windows, as the jackhammer foraged under the black night sky like a giant glow worm. At the east, south and west sides of the house, the drop was beginning to approach that of the north, approximately thirty-five metres. Each day and each night, P_ followed the jackhammer’s movements by observing them from the different windows of his house, going clockwise from his north facing bedroom window, around to the east, then south and west, and back to the north again – P_ via the other rooms, and the jackhammer via the viaduct’s Gothic arches.
One day, the workers left early. The rain had been constant and heavy the whole day, and the excavation’s pumps had been continuously draining water at full bore from the cavity’s base. But finally the rain had stopped, leaving an evening sky tinted blood-red, and a chilling breeze that swept over P_’s house and swirled in the vacuous spaces around it. From his bedroom window, P_ could make out, in the northeast corner, the zigzag access ladder of steel and timber. It clung to the concrete wall reinforcement and extended itself down to the base of the granite wound, fifty-six metres below surface level.
Something rose within P_. He felt its rise, a kind of answering call, a living urgent response to the measured bursts of the jackhammer’s sound that was so much a part of him, a part that had signalled to him for so long, that had enduringly enticed: the prospect of a wild and unpredictable closeness to a machine life, to share its vital rhythm, its fabulous power.
*
LONG SHOT FROM P_’S BEDROOM WINDOW, ANGLED DOWN INTO EXCAVATION BELOW. LATE EVENING.
Far below, amongst the glaucous puddles in the fading light, a figure made tiny by great distance moves on the floor of the excavation. There is at once an eagerness, and a trepidation in its movements, as if careful, while hurrying, not to have any accidents before reaching what appears to be its destination, a large (but toy-like, from this distance) excavator-mounted hydraulic jackhammer.
Some moments pass, when the figure is not visible. The usual city sounds are suppressed. Quiet remains.
CUT TO: LONG SHOT FROM NORTHERN RIM OF EXCAVATION, LOOKING SOUTH, AND ANGLED DOWN. LATE EVENING.
From deep within the granite cavity, issues a sudden flaring of light. It comes from floodlights that have been switched on, presumably by the lone figure who has gained unlawful access to the monstrous destruction site, which has no conclusion for itself in mind. Moments later, the throbbing of an engine is heard.
CAMERA PANS UPWARDS. P_’S HOUSE SLOWLY COMES INTO VIEW.
LATE EVENING. SOUND OF A LIGHT WIND BLOWING.
(The slow, steady throb of the engine in the excavation continues.)
Against the flare of a crimson sunset thrown up by passing rain clouds, the lamp black silhouette of P’_s house and viaduct is seen. The house is an inconsequential structure made marvellous and consequential by the fact of its support, which is in fact a granite pinnacle seventy three metres tall, but no wider than one metre at its apex. This pinnacle supports the rock platform on which the house stands, a platform two metres thick, and of area no greater than the house itself. Extending westwards from the house is the viaduct, its top surface of one-metre-thick rock, supported on a row of black Gothic arches seventy three metres tall. Scudding clouds and ripples of crimson light give the house a sense of flying through the air on its own, in an ecstasy borne of physical laws defied, an ecstasy made possible by the machine’s attentions.
CUT TO: FLOOR OF EXCAVATION LOOKING DOWN FROM NORTHERN RIM. LATE EVENING.
The silence and serenity of the preceding scene is inconsiderately shattered by the harsh metallic clanging of the jackhammer being operated. The arm of the machine moves up and down, selecting areas for the jackhammer to break up, roaming the surface of the granite. The noise echoes in the cavity, drowning out any human cries of elation that might have been heard. But from one side of the machine, the figure seen earlier emerges, clearly transported, for, as the jackhammer continues its percussions, apparently set to automatic, the figure lifts its arms high in jubilation, or perhaps veneration.
Incomprehensibly the human figure runs towards the giant jackhammer bit, enfolding it with arms in tight embrace.
CAMERA ZOOMS IN FOR CLOSE-UP.
There is blood everywhere, pools of it on the ground, sprays and splashes of it on the still-hammering machine. Droplets fly off in all directions. Something lies under the point of the mechanism’s bit, but is unrecognisable.
CUT TO: LONG SHOT AS BEFORE, OF SILHOUETTED HOUSE AND VIADUCT. DUSK.
(Machine’s sound becoming louder.)
FADE TO BLACK.
(Machine’s sound becoming louder still.)
figuratio
October 2016
Why I Write
Why do I write?
It’s not for the “writing lifestyle” that I write. I’ve come to think that I can do without this. The lifestyle of hoping for, and believing in, something evanescent which, when considered in the grand scheme of things, so easily disappears again: “public adoration”. Or to put it a little less optimistically, “public approval”. And considering that very few of that public are ever likely to read what I’ve written, I now know that while there can be some romance in thinking of myself as a writer (famous or not) this is entirely the wrong reason for writing. It feels wrong: like something I am tempted to do, but know all the while to be bad for my soul. I’ve now had enough of that. As Boëthius says in his De Consolatione Philosophæ:
“Thou knowest that these things which I say are true, and that I was never delighted in my own praise, for the secret of a good conscience is in some sort diminished when by declaring what he hath done, a man receiveth the reward of fame.”
This is not false humility. A writer can know his own greatness – indeed, should know that greatness, in order to produce something worthy of that name – yet not depend on public approval for personal happiness. This is how I interpret Boëthius, and it makes sense to me. Greatness thus becomes independent of what others might think. Perhaps an elaborate self-induced delusion. Perhaps not. I cannot think of a single person whose character fame – actively sought – has improved.
Neither is it for the money. Only a lucky few can hope to have an income solely derived from novel-writing, and even fewer the grand (and often, spiritually empty) lifestyle that derives from wealth. I disabused myself long ago, of the carrots – the false hopes – continually offered us: remarkable stories of publishing success on the net that one reads about. Stories held out as inducements to ways of thinking that are mere pipe dreams . . .
I do not write to leave a legacy for the world to discover one day, or rediscover. The world will make all the literary discoveries it wants to, long after I am gone from it, by the process of creation. And it will do so without my help. The art of creation is, simply, the creation of art.
How many books have I read, which have significantly changed my life?
Perhaps none. Certainly I have read some remarkable fiction in my time, fiction that has captured both my respect, and my emotions – and I’ve always believed that the best novels are those that have left me with some strong sense of feeling something at the end, whether it be regret, exhilaration, sadness or despair. Such is the power of a good story.
No, the real changes in my life have been made by people – those whom I love, and those whom I think I would rather have done without. And those whom, oddly enough, fit both categories simultaneously. It is all these people that make the basis for my fiction. And indeed, for my life. Thus (to myself at least) it makes sense entirely that I should write about these people. In a most indirect way, of course. They have stirred my emotions and respect more than any novel could ever have done, so it makes sense to live that part of my life I call my “literary life” by writing fiction which reflects these personal influences. But this cannot be, at heart, the reason I write my fiction, for otherwise, a simple journal would suffice, making anything more, redundant.
Yet I still feel the need to create . . .
In writing, I can reformulate – “come to grips with”, as it were – my life. I can make some sense of it, for undoubtedly, there is a certain catharsis when writing about that which is intimate and often painful.
But there’s more than just that, more than a mere “feeling better about it all”. The great 20th century English writer John Fowles said, in 1969, “I like the creation of another world. That is very beautiful and satisfying for me. As soon as a book leaves this room, this house, there’s always a diminution of pleasure.” That is certainly true. In the process of novel-writing, one does “live” in the world being created, in a way that only a novelist can fully understand. But is that a plausible reason, at heart, to continue to write novels? For if I wished to escape, I could just as easily travel, or watch a movie. Or read another’s creation – another’s novel – and avoid the countless hours, days and weeks of struggle to perfect my own created world, however cathartic or captivating it might be.
My father died aged sixty-four, when I was thirty-eight. I am now sixty-four, so I think not infrequently about my own death, which will be certain. I remember seeing him, not long before he died, carving his initials “KK” onto a wooden bench at the seaside. And not long after he died, the city council removed the bench, presumably destroying it. The carving might just as well have read, “I was here”, for the seeming futility of it all. Likewise, the gold-anodized aluminium plaques on the spacecraft Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, carrying depictions of a man and a woman, inter alia, were sent out on their interstellar journey in the Panglossian hope that extraterrestrial life might understand us, even if such understanding were to postdate our extinction as a race.
Yet however futile such actions might be, there persists a basic human desire to reach out, to communicate. The near impossibility of having an actual exchange of information does not appear to be important; it is the hope of having one which sustains us, and compels us to send out our “messages in bottles”.
This, although it comes closer to the reason I write, is still not central to it.
It is death which gives life its value, and therefore its meaning. For what we value becomes meaningful. Do our attempts to reach out to others stem from a desire to “cheat death”, by ensuring that we leave behind something – children, figures on a plaque, a carving on a wooden bench, or a created fiction – so that we “live on” in some way after we die? Perhaps, but I believe there is something yet more crucial.
“Leaving one’s mark” as a testament to a life well-lived is noble, because it affirms the value of life given it by death. If that mark is art, the affirmation is the noblest form of art. And if that art is one’s novel, which always says something about its author’s life, then the novelist is a noble being who says rather more elaborately - to himself - “I was here”.
figuratio
April 2018
It’s not for the “writing lifestyle” that I write. I’ve come to think that I can do without this. The lifestyle of hoping for, and believing in, something evanescent which, when considered in the grand scheme of things, so easily disappears again: “public adoration”. Or to put it a little less optimistically, “public approval”. And considering that very few of that public are ever likely to read what I’ve written, I now know that while there can be some romance in thinking of myself as a writer (famous or not) this is entirely the wrong reason for writing. It feels wrong: like something I am tempted to do, but know all the while to be bad for my soul. I’ve now had enough of that. As Boëthius says in his De Consolatione Philosophæ:
“Thou knowest that these things which I say are true, and that I was never delighted in my own praise, for the secret of a good conscience is in some sort diminished when by declaring what he hath done, a man receiveth the reward of fame.”
This is not false humility. A writer can know his own greatness – indeed, should know that greatness, in order to produce something worthy of that name – yet not depend on public approval for personal happiness. This is how I interpret Boëthius, and it makes sense to me. Greatness thus becomes independent of what others might think. Perhaps an elaborate self-induced delusion. Perhaps not. I cannot think of a single person whose character fame – actively sought – has improved.
Neither is it for the money. Only a lucky few can hope to have an income solely derived from novel-writing, and even fewer the grand (and often, spiritually empty) lifestyle that derives from wealth. I disabused myself long ago, of the carrots – the false hopes – continually offered us: remarkable stories of publishing success on the net that one reads about. Stories held out as inducements to ways of thinking that are mere pipe dreams . . .
I do not write to leave a legacy for the world to discover one day, or rediscover. The world will make all the literary discoveries it wants to, long after I am gone from it, by the process of creation. And it will do so without my help. The art of creation is, simply, the creation of art.
How many books have I read, which have significantly changed my life?
Perhaps none. Certainly I have read some remarkable fiction in my time, fiction that has captured both my respect, and my emotions – and I’ve always believed that the best novels are those that have left me with some strong sense of feeling something at the end, whether it be regret, exhilaration, sadness or despair. Such is the power of a good story.
No, the real changes in my life have been made by people – those whom I love, and those whom I think I would rather have done without. And those whom, oddly enough, fit both categories simultaneously. It is all these people that make the basis for my fiction. And indeed, for my life. Thus (to myself at least) it makes sense entirely that I should write about these people. In a most indirect way, of course. They have stirred my emotions and respect more than any novel could ever have done, so it makes sense to live that part of my life I call my “literary life” by writing fiction which reflects these personal influences. But this cannot be, at heart, the reason I write my fiction, for otherwise, a simple journal would suffice, making anything more, redundant.
Yet I still feel the need to create . . .
In writing, I can reformulate – “come to grips with”, as it were – my life. I can make some sense of it, for undoubtedly, there is a certain catharsis when writing about that which is intimate and often painful.
But there’s more than just that, more than a mere “feeling better about it all”. The great 20th century English writer John Fowles said, in 1969, “I like the creation of another world. That is very beautiful and satisfying for me. As soon as a book leaves this room, this house, there’s always a diminution of pleasure.” That is certainly true. In the process of novel-writing, one does “live” in the world being created, in a way that only a novelist can fully understand. But is that a plausible reason, at heart, to continue to write novels? For if I wished to escape, I could just as easily travel, or watch a movie. Or read another’s creation – another’s novel – and avoid the countless hours, days and weeks of struggle to perfect my own created world, however cathartic or captivating it might be.
My father died aged sixty-four, when I was thirty-eight. I am now sixty-four, so I think not infrequently about my own death, which will be certain. I remember seeing him, not long before he died, carving his initials “KK” onto a wooden bench at the seaside. And not long after he died, the city council removed the bench, presumably destroying it. The carving might just as well have read, “I was here”, for the seeming futility of it all. Likewise, the gold-anodized aluminium plaques on the spacecraft Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, carrying depictions of a man and a woman, inter alia, were sent out on their interstellar journey in the Panglossian hope that extraterrestrial life might understand us, even if such understanding were to postdate our extinction as a race.
Yet however futile such actions might be, there persists a basic human desire to reach out, to communicate. The near impossibility of having an actual exchange of information does not appear to be important; it is the hope of having one which sustains us, and compels us to send out our “messages in bottles”.
This, although it comes closer to the reason I write, is still not central to it.
It is death which gives life its value, and therefore its meaning. For what we value becomes meaningful. Do our attempts to reach out to others stem from a desire to “cheat death”, by ensuring that we leave behind something – children, figures on a plaque, a carving on a wooden bench, or a created fiction – so that we “live on” in some way after we die? Perhaps, but I believe there is something yet more crucial.
“Leaving one’s mark” as a testament to a life well-lived is noble, because it affirms the value of life given it by death. If that mark is art, the affirmation is the noblest form of art. And if that art is one’s novel, which always says something about its author’s life, then the novelist is a noble being who says rather more elaborately - to himself - “I was here”.
figuratio
April 2018
