In Waterstones Plymouth, looking for something to read. The Spire, has W. read that? Golding? Oh yes, W.’s read it. He’s read all of Golding. It was part of his great reading phase, W. says. He read everything, everything! Piles and piles of literature! That was in the evening, after reading and writing on philosophy. The day reading philosophy and writing philosophy and the evening reading literature, author after author. Those were his golden years, says W. He was in his heyday! He doesn’t read anything now, says W. with great melancholy. Or very little. It happens in your late 30s, says W., you can’t read as much anymore. You can’t read and write for a whole day, and then read in the evening as well.
Of course other things get in the way, too. He hardly worked in those days. His job was virtually part-time. How things have changed? What time does W. have now for reading? Now and again, W. says, he goes to the tulip garden at Mount Edgcombe to read Kafka. Off he goes, a fifteen minute walk through Stonehouse up to the Naval Dockyards and then the ferry across the Tamar – a friendly river, says W., he always thinks of it as that. And then a short walk the other side to the tulip garden, where W. gets out his Kafka. Although he loves Kafka, loves him more than anyone and always did,. in some sense Kafka crushes him. How can a human being write anything this great?, he asks himself, and then thinks ruefully of his own work. Where did it all go wrong?, W says.
I’ve never gone through that, have I?, W. says. I’ve never really experienced failure. In fact I hardly regard myself as a failure at all, W. is sure of that. All that writing on the net, for example. would Kafka ever write on the net? Of course not. W. doubts I’ve ever really read Kafka. If I had, then doubtless I wouldn’t be writing on the net. You want to be loved, says W., that’s your weakness. The net is your delusion. If I had really known my own failure, I would know that. W. has been to the bottom, he says, but he doubts I have. In truth, I’ve never really known failure, despite everything I write, says W. It’s all play-acting.
Once, W. too thought of himself as a writer, a literary writer. He filled notebook after notebook. It was in his early twenties. Everyone wants to be a literary writer in their early 20s, says W. Of course no one ever is. W. realised it pretty quickly. I knew I was no Kafka, says W. That’s what you don’t know yet – you don’t know you’re not Kafka. You don’t have a sense of yourself as a failure, which is ironic because you are a failure.
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