'Think of what others might have achieved in your place', W. says. 'Think of what other might have achieved if that had been given what you were given'. A desk. A computer. A set of bookshelves. And time, above all, that: time. – 'You're a usurper, aren't you?' I've occupied the place someone else should have had: someone cleverer than me, more hard-working. Someone kinder than me.
God knows, I've stolen his place, too, W. says. I've stolen his time. I've stolen everyone's time, everyone's who's had to listen to me, and God knows, to read me.
'Why do you write such bad books?', W. wonders. Of course, it's a sign that something has collapsed that I can publish anything at all. Do I think I could have published something in the old days, the good days? Do I think I could have brought out a first book and then a second book when there were proper publishers, proper editors?
Ah, how did I slip past the gatekeepers? How did I slip a first book and then a second book past them? I thought I'd been cunning – I thought I'd been clever, W. knows that. Here's a chance, here's a niche, I thought. No one's looking, I thought. A doorway has opened, and if I just sneak through …
I thought I'd seized an opportunity. Thought I'd seen something no one else had seen: a chance, an opportunity. Thought I'd got one over on the world, which in fact I hadn't. Thought I'd stolen a march on the real thinkers, the real writers, who were too busy procrastinating to seize the moment.
I thought: they might be able to think, they might be able to write, but only I'm hungry enough, avid enough to see the situation for what it is, and take advantage of it. Only I'm desperate enough: that's what I thought, pitying myself, thinking that I had no other choice. I've been out in the cold so long, I whimpered to myself. I've suffered enough, I wept to myself, and the tears glistened on my cheek.
Ah, how cunning I thought I'd been. How shameless – and I was proud of my shamelessness. Whilst the others dozed, what had I done? Whilst the real thinkers, the real philosophers, pondered the great questions, I'd written, I'd finished writing once and then twice, for a first time and then over again. How cunning!, I thought, and smiled to myself.
I was a member of the real world, not like the other procrastinators, I thought. I was in the business of marketing, of self-marketing, as you have to be in the real world, I thought. And whilst there was an opportunity – whilst there was a chance to publish, who was I to hold back?
I knew I was writing rubbish, this is what gets to him, W. says. I was gleefully writing rubbish, gleefully publishing rubbish … They'll publish any old thing!, I cried to myself. They'll accept any old rubbish!
Shamelessness: that was it, W. says. I am a shameless man. Let the others procrastinate, I have a book to publish, I thought. Let the thinkers think, the writers write, but there's an opportunity here … I'm going to slip by unnoticed. I'm going to pass through the gates of publication like a thief in the night …
But in truth, I'd slipped by no one. No sentries were posted at the gate, were they? No search lights were seeking to pick me up. No klaxons went off, no SWAT teams appeared at my door, no snipers to pick me off from rooftops. There was nothing – only eerie silence, as after heavy snow. Nothing – snowbanks, white and silent; the sky, white and silent. My first book was published – and nothing happened. My second book – and still nothing happened.
'Even you, even you thought you weren't getting away with it', W. says. Maybe I wanted to stopped, wanted to be punished. Maybe I wanted my gleeful smile to wiped from my face. – 'Something in you knows you've done wrong'. A bad review: isn't that I craved? Indignant emails from experts in my field. Letters of abuse from real scholars … And instead: nothing. Nothing. My book – and the million other books, there being more books published now than ever before – met with perfect silence, perfect indifference.
In truth, there's no one to offend, not any more, W. says. No one cares. It's collapsed – hadn't I taught him that? The academic system's collapsed. Academic publishing's collapsed. The university's finished, and we're in limbo, in some strange new space.
He sees it even in me, W. says, the desire to be judged, the desire to be told off, as by a stern by kindly headmaster. To be told off, punished, and then readmitted to class. I want standards. I want punishment … I want what's right to be right. I want not to be able to get away with it. I do not want to be cunning. I don't want to remain what I have become.
In truth, I only want to be shot, W. says. I want to feel a hot bullet in my temple. I want to feel it shattering my skull. I want the searchlight to find me, want to cut down by machine gun fire. I want to be bayonetted and collapse in the snow, W. says. He sees it in his mind's eye: a smile on my dying face, without glee. A smile which says, justice has been done.
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