What have you done today?, W. asks me. How do you actually spend your time? Weeks and months and years pass, but I seem to do nothing, W. says. What have you read? What have you written, and why haven’t you sent me any of it?
Friends should send each other what they write, W. says. He sends me everything – everything, and I barely even read it. He doesn’t know why he thanked me in the acknowledgements of his new book, he says. I tell him I was surprised to find myself thanked as part of a long list of friends and colleagues. Didn’t I always acknowledge his help with very special thanks?
W. says I didn’t even read the chapters he sent to him, he could tell, my remarks were too general. I did read them, I tell him, well nearly all of them. You didn’t read chapter five, says W., with the dog. He was very proud of his pages on his dog, even though he doesn’t own a dog. You should always include a dog in your books, says W.
It’s a bit like his imaginary children in his previous book, W. says. Do you remember the passages on children? Even W. wept. He weeps now to think of them. He’s very moved by his own imaginary examples, he says. He wants to work a nun into his next book, he says. An imaginary nun.
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