How did I put up with Manchester for all those years?, W. wanders. How come the city didn’t get to me, destroy me? ‘I wandered through that part of myself called Spain’, wrote Jean Genet in his Thief’s Journal. I wandered through that part of myself called Manchester: isn’t that how I thought of it?, W. says. Manchester is part of me, and not I a part of it: isn’t that what I said to myself?
I’ve always been a solipsist, W. says. I’ve never been part of anything. I’ve been involved in the world. I was reading Kafka, wasn’t I? Reading, and writing – in my own way. Trying to write. Failing to write. But continuing to write regardless.
I had my bedsit, W. says. I drew the city around me like a cloak. And when I graduated, I stayed on the plain of Manchester, lost on those plain, a man without ambition, a man without significance. What did I think I was going to do? I was dreaming of internal exile, W. knows that. I was dreaming of going inside, and never coming out.
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