You’re not quite up to it, are you? You’re not really up to it, are you? You’re not up to much, are you? What is it you think that you’re doing here? What is it you think you’re writing? You’ve stopped writing books and trying to write books, but for what? For moaning about being unable to write books? For writing about being unable to write and disappointing yourself by writing, but for what? For what and for whom? Who is reading and who is bothering? Because you’re not reading this yourself, are you?
You’re not interested in it yourself, are you? What does it do for you? What work does it perform for you? What is the point of all this? But there is no point, is there? Verbosity with barely any form, barely any content, and what for, and who for? What was it you said to W. yesterday? What was it you said on the phone to W., yesterday? I want to produce a 30,000 word rant, that’s what you said. I want to produce one single paragraph of pure rant, issuing out of itself, propelled forth from a few simple elements, a few simple images, a few simple ideas, just that, and spinning itself out of itself, that’s what you said. But you’re impressing no one. You’re writing for no one.
Once, you wrote books for others and now you’re writing for no one. You’ve driven away your readers, what few readers you had. What readers you had are gone. The first book sold 233 copies, and who knows what the second book will sell. The first book, 233 copies, 54 in the UK, 150 or so in the USA, the rest elsewhere. 233 copies, that’s not much, but it will reach far more readers than this will ever read. And how many copies will the second book sell? How many hardback copies at £50 a pop do you think it will sell? Less than 233, there’s no question of that. Much less than 233, and probably deservedly so.
Once you wrote books for others. Once you tried to explain things, writing clearly, writing carefully. It’s true that by the second book, you’d given up on this. It’s true that the second book is already something else, another way of writing and not a good one. The second book is the worst kind of failure, because it does not even fulfil the elementary tasks of comprehensibility and rigour. It is neither comprehensible nor rigorous. Neither one nor the other.
Was the first book comprehensible and rigorous? It was not – far from it – but it did not set itself up as a little war machine against comprehensibility and rigorousness. What is amusing about the second book, which you haven’t even received yet – just wait for that – is the blurb you wrote for the back is written in a pidgin English. Yes, even the blurb, which you supplied, is grammatically suspect. The blurb says it rightaway: this author can’t write and shouldn’t be allowed to write. The blurb says: who allowed this author to write a book, when he can’t even write a blurb?
W.’s blurb has a grammatical mistake in the first line, but he didn’t write his blurb, his editor wrote his blurb, as he pointed out to me. I said to him, with glee, you have a grammatical mistake in the first line of the blurb and on the first page of your book, but he was unperturbed. I didn’t write the blurb, he said, and I still haven’t got anything like the number of grammatical mistakes as in your first book. In the latter, he is probably right. But what of the former?
W.’s editor is scrupulous. W.’s editor visited him and bought him dinner, whereas my editor doesn’t reply to my e-mails. Whereas W.’s editor visits W. in his hometown, hundreds of miles from where the editor lives, my editor does not acknowledge my e-mails nor, it is likely, my existence; he is indifferent to me. I still remember when W.’s editor first offered him a contract; it was at a conference two years ago. W. and I had given up on the conference from the first and gone to straight to the bar and held court in the bar.
The editor, who had also given up on the conference joined us in the bar and for beer and whiskey and chips in the bar. We ordered beer, then whiskey, then chips, then beer again, then whiskey again, then chips again. W.’s friends blamed me for W.s degeneration. Even since you’ve been hanging out with X. (me), you’ve changed, they told him. We were in the bar, the conference was elsewhere, but we were in the bar, and the bar was everything. Beer, whiskey, chips – all you could want. Something to drink, something to eat, and the pleasant sense of having escaped something. Yes, beer, whiskey, chips, and relief: we had escaped. And he was with us, the editor. He was with us, and he and W. discussed the book and we thought to ourselves, despite everything, despite the fact that we’re in the bar, and we were here as soon as it opened, we’ve done something with out day. That’s what we thought: something has happened, we’re in the bar, but we’ve already achieved something, and what have the others achieved?
Hours passed. Beer, whiskey, chips, the editor disappeared and we had other visitors. But all was well; the bar was around us, the conference was going on elsewhere, we had plenty to drink and plenty to eat and we’d already achieved something – there was W.’s book, which he’d been writing without publisher, and now he’d found a publisher in the person of our friend the editor. For everything has to be done through friends, as W. always says. Everything through friends and by way of friendship, says W., who is the least sentimental of people. Through friends, and not through distant and artificial connections such as I had with my editor, W. pointed out.
And was it then he told me I’d sell less than 80 copies of my book? Was it then he told me how many copies of the book I would sell? As I pointed out to him on the phone, I’ve sold twice that number in the USA alone. As I said to him yesterday on the phone, I’ve sold far more than 80 copies in the USA alone. W. insists that I begin a third book. W. is insistent: why don’t you do some work? And I said, I’m tired, I don’t want to do any work. And W. said, you’ve got to do some work, this is no good. And I said, I ordered some Bergson books. And W. said, have you read them? And I said, no. I don’t do that anymore. And he said, you don’t read anymore?, and I said, I’m tired. I worked too hard on the last book.
Evenings and weekends for a year. Evenings and weekends for a whole year – gone. I’ve had enough, I said. And W. berated me. What do you think you’re doing?, he said. I want to write a 30,000 word single paragraph rant, I said. Why do you want to do that?, said W. There is no why, I said, I just want to do it. But how likely is that?, said W., you won’t finish it, will you? And I said, I’m tired, I want to rant, I want to write a 30,000 word rant in which I say everything there is to say about the state of the world. And W. said, it’s not going to happen, is it? And then he sent me an article I’d written for a special edition of a journal he’s editing, with corrections. It’s not bad, said W., and they’re not many typos. There it was, my article, with W.’s corrections.
What have I told you about referring to your own books? wrote W., in his corrections. You shouldn’t refer to yourself. Do you think Blanchot referred to his own books? said W. on the phone. He did sometimes, I said. Yes but not all the time, said W. Then W. told me about what he was going to say about Blanchot’s notion of the neuter. I’m going to chant neu-ter, neu-ter like an ape, he said. Just like you, he said. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Like an ape, said W.
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