Sisyphus

I admit it: I am completely lost before the massive task of writing the new book. I am too busy at work, for one thing: there are constant administrative tasks and a huge flood of essays to mark. Then there is a low level illness which prevents me from ever assembling any thoughts, or following from one idea to another. Still, these are good days: summer is here, my loud neighbour has moved out, I can get to sleep at a reasonable hour…. But the frustration of falling below the level of work!

The Sisyphean task, every day, to take out my notebook and try and write from what I have written there – it is absurd, work without work, a wheel idly spinning and nothing is done. A list of posts I shall have to write to fill in gaps in the book on my whiteboard: Levinas on illeity, the fragment, Hegel on Heraclitus, and, most bafflingly: exteriority – being (how pretentious!) Then there is W.’s book manuscript on a similar topics to my published book and the one I am writing with which I torment myself with – am I right? Is he right? We can’t both be right! What does it matter who is right? Isn’t it philosophy that is at issue – the attempt to do philosophy (whatever that means)?

Doing philosophy? What a luxury! And one you can’t afford! You are a writer, a humble writer, I say to myself, knowing straightaway this is sheer affectation. Still there is the chance of redeeming the first book in the second – this is the ruse: write another book, always another, to erase the mistakes of the last one. But to write another book is to make new mistakes, so the path to yet another book is cleared.

Sisyphean task! Laughter at the great comedy of the academic writer. Who will read the book? What does it matter? It’s exhausting – it exhausts me! Where did I learn that ponderous style? Here I am, at the office. On a Saturday at the beginning of summer. Tomorrow, the Lake District – that is a consolation. Today – is too long; I know nothing will begin, that what failed to begin yesterday and all the other days will fail again today.