Category: W.

When W. was 13, despite the fact he had not been brought up religiously, he demanded to be taken to church. ‘It was a great moment’, he said. What brought it on? W.’s not sure. ‘You’ve never been religious, have you?’, he says to me. ‘I’m Hindu‘, I say, and he laughs till beer comes out his nostrils.

‘You – a Hindu. Go on, tell me something about Hinduism.’ – ‘There’s only one God in Hinduism.’ – ‘Oh yes?’ – ‘I learned Sanskrit for a while!’ – ‘Speak Sanskrit to me, then.’ I try to chant a sloka of the Upanishads, but it’s forgotten. ‘Are you still Catholic, then?’, I ask him. ‘Oh you’re always a Catholic. There’s no choice’, says W.

He’s Jewish as well, through his mother’s line. Was that why he learnt Hebrew? Partially. W.s decided I should take up Sanskrit again. ‘It’ll do you good. You’re full of pathos. It’s a gift. You should become religious.’ Sal thinks W.’s drifting back to religion. She gives him a year. ‘It’s all this Rosenzweig’, says W., ‘it’s very plausible.’ He tells me about it. ‘See where Levinas got it from?’

W. went over to Paris to study with Levinas, in his Talmudic classes. He phoned the great man’s house, and then put the phone down as soon as Levinas picked up. ‘His voice was so high pitched!’ I tell him Heidegger’s voice was high pitched, too. ‘Have you heard the recordings?’ – ‘We should have gone and shat in his well’, says W., and it’s true we were close to Todtnauenberg, back in the summer. ‘And burned down his hut.’

Later, he says, ‘You need a religion.’ I tell him I’ve got one. ‘You’re not a Hindu,’ he says. – ‘It’s a cultural identity’, I tell him. ‘Like being Jewish. We leave the word religion to you Westerners.’ W. finds this very amusing. I continue, ‘Haven’t you read the Heraclitus seminar? Heidegger says there was no such thing as religion for the Greeks.’

For his part, W. knows religion’s not a matter of belief. ‘It’s about life!‘, he says impressively. – ‘Ah, Michel Henry.’ Yes, W.’s been reading Henry. ‘It’s about the deformalisation of time!‘, says W. ‘- ‘Ah, Levinas.’ Yes, W.’s going to write on Levinas and Henry. – ‘And don’t forget Rosenzweig!’ – ‘Everyone’s writing on Rosenzweig’, I tell him.

This doesn’t deter him. He read Rosenzweig very slowly, in German, every morning for a few months. ‘I didn’t understand a word.’ Still, it was a good exercise. He’s gained from the experience. ‘Every morning, getting up before dawn.’ He would go into the study and sit at his desk before he did anything else.

‘Did you have a cup of tea?’ No: the tea could wait. ‘How about coffee?’ Coffee for later. ‘Were you nude?’ No, he wasn’t nude. He sat in his bathrobe and read. I’m impressed. ‘I always begin with coffee’, I tell him. That’s where I go wrong, says W. Nothing must distract you, not even coffee. You have to read! What about Sal? He left her lying there, in the warm bed. ‘Is she impressed by your commitment?’ – ‘She thinks I’m an idiot.’

Later, W. shows me his Rosenzweig books. ‘What you have to understand is that Rosenzweig was very, very clever. We’ll never, whatever we do, be as clever as him. We’ll never have a single idea, although he had hundreds of ideas.’ I ask whether this was because he was religious.’ – ‘Religion’s a serious business,’ says W. ‘You need a religion. It would be a channel for your pathos.’

If there’s one thing he’s learnt from me, says W., it’s pathos. ‘Saying nothing, but with great emotion.’ He’s always impressed. ‘You’re so serious.’ I tell him I am serious. ‘No’, says W., ‘it’s because you’re working class. You think you have to be serious when you give a paper, but you don’t really have to be.’

‘I don’t think we’re serious enough for religion’, says W., later. ‘We lack something.’ We talk about our religious friend X. ‘He’s serious’, says W., ‘it’s very clear.’ Of course, X. is cleverer than us. ‘Oh yes, much cleverer.’ He’ll amount to something, and we’ll amount to … – ‘Nothing.’ Exactly.

‘We’re chatterers’, W. decides, ‘like monkeys. That’s what we do – we chatter, night and day.’ I agree, we’re great chatterers. Hours pass, where we do nothing but chatter. Whenever I visit, W. announces in the afternoon that he’s going to take a nap. But he never naps, because he would rather sprawl in the sofa, as I am sprawled at the dining table, and chatter.

Very occasionally, the chatter will come together into an idea. Not our ideas, but the ideas of other people, strung together in an interesting fashion. This is how we write our joint papers, each of which has to have a new rule, a writing constraint. Right now, W. wants to get nuns into our papers. ‘There has to be a nun.’ He tells me about Raymond Gaita’s nun, and how he might steal her from his book. ‘It’s a good book,’ says W., ‘with a great nun.’

Recently, W., who has no dog, has been writing of his dog. ‘Paragraphs and paragraphs,’ he says, ‘full of pathos.’ And last year, there were the great pages he wrote on his children. ‘My finest pages!’ He nearly wept upon reading them, says W., ‘and I wrote them! Amazing!’ ‘There should always be a dog in your paper’, says W., ‘but only if you don’t have a dog.’

We’ve both known many monks, we agree, and independently of one another. Both of us have had what we call our monk years, W. as a not-quite-novice, and I as a member of something like a lay religious community. ‘But you were never religious were you?’, says W. – ‘No. But I knew a lot of monks.’ So did he, being a lay member of the Trappists. It was a silent order, W. remembers. ‘That must have been difficult.’ W had liked the peace. He wasn’t as inane back then. His head wasn’t full of chatter. ‘It was before I met you.’ And then: ‘when did we first meet?’

I tell him I remember it well. ‘You were holding forth on Deleuze, and on the poor translation of his study of Foucault.’ Oh yes, W. remembers. ‘It was 1996.’ – ‘I was still serious back then’, said W., ‘those were my serious years, when I was close to my peak.’ He had no need of pathos back then. Or nuns, or dogs. ‘I didn’t have to keep you entertained’, he says.

Meanwhile, I’ve jotted down our ideas on the back of a newspaper. Topoi koinon – idle chatter – Rosenzweig – the future before the present – the infinite rising up in time – Hermann Cohen, The Jewish Sources of Religion. Ordinary time = pre-individual; messianic time, principle of individuation – I speak only as a response.’ I read it out. ‘Sounds impressive,’ says W., ‘I like the Greek – did you add that, with your formidable knowledge of ancient languages?’ and then, ‘Right that’s enough work. I want some gin.’

We’re looking out at the sea. A great shadow seems to move under the water. ‘I can see it’, say W., ‘look: the kraken of your stupidity.’ Yes, there it is, moving darkly beneath the water.

W. has little interest in literature apart from Krasznahorkai. ‘He’s great’, he says, and we remember again our favourite scene from Tarr’s Damnation, for which Krasznahorkai wrote the script. ‘The best bit of dialogue I’ve ever heard’, says W.

W. has decided very firmly that I’m working class, and nothing will stand in the way of that. He rescued me from the warehouse floor. ‘Am I your protégé?’, I ask him. – ‘How old are you?’ I tell him. ‘You’re too old to be a protégé.’ – ‘Does that mean you’re going to get another one?’ I think W.’s always on the lookout. ‘You have great faith in the younger generation’, I tell him. But I think W. wants to be a protégé himself.

We decided some years ago that what we needed was a leader. ‘We need to be pushed’, says W., ‘we’re incapable of doing it on our own.’ We consider candidates. ‘We mustn’t tell our leader that he’s our leader’, says W., when we decide. Of course it’s the first thing we tell him, in a pub near Greenwich. ‘I think we scared him’, says W., later. Which one of us told him? Was it W. or me? Next time, we agree, we mustn’t make that mistake! We have a candidate in mind. We’ll be much more careful this time.

‘Of course you can’t be ambitious once you know you’ve failed’, says W., ‘if there’s one thing we know, it’s that we’ve failed.’ – ‘Definitely.’ W.’s favourite question: ‘at what age did you become aware you were a failure?’, or ‘When did you know, absolutely know you had failed?’, or ‘When did you stop denying it to yourself, your failure?’

For his part, W. gave away his notebooks and writings. ‘I’d write all the time, but I realised I would never be Kafka.’ And then the traditional apothegm we use when we say, Kafka, just as Homer uses formulas such as the ‘wine dark sea’: ‘How was it possible for a human being to write like that?’ We pause in reverence.

W.’s lifestory turns around Kafka, he reflects on the train. He studied at the university he did because it was permitted to study European literature in translation there. Of course they lied: ‘we didn’t read Kafka at all!’ For a time, W. thought he might become Kafka. ‘He was all I read. Constantly, again and again’, and he speaks lovingly of discovering the brightly coloured Shocken editions of Kafka in his school library.

Our inaugural Dogma paper was on Kafka – the room was packed, and he spoke very movingly (of course, my paper was inept. ‘What were you going on about?’) And, in a difficult situation, W. always asks himself what Kafka would do. ‘You have to know you’re not Kafka’, W. insists. ‘All this writing! You should stop it!’

W. stopped writing after his undergraduate years. ‘I knew I’d never be a genius.’ He gave his notebooks and writings to a girlfriend. ‘I haven’t kept a scrap’, he says, as the German countryside rushes by us. We are standing, drinking beer. German teenagers are playing early Depeche Mode on a ghetto blaster. ‘Do you think you’re a genius?’, W. asks me. – ‘God, no.’ – ‘I think you still have a nostalgia for the time when you thought you might be a genius.’ I turn the question on him. ‘We’re failures, the pair of us’, he says. ‘But we know we’ll never amount to anything. That’s our gift. Our gift to the world.’

‘You can’t blame me for criticising you,’ says W., ‘it’s your fault, you bring it out in people. It’s because you’re helpless. You invite criticism.’ I tell him this maybe the case. But isn’t a certain kind of person who likes to criticise?, I ask. W. says the blame lies squarely with me. ‘It’s entirely your fault.’

Kafka and Tarr are our spiritual leaders. ‘They’ve gone the furthest’, we agree. Apparently the latest Tarr production is in trouble. ‘We should send him some money.’ But we need more immediate leaders, too. ‘We’re stupid. We need to be led.’ We long ago decided that we could redeem ourselves only by creating opportunities for those more capable than ourselves. ‘It’s our gift’, says W., ‘we know we’re stupid, but we also know what stupidity is not. We ought to throw ourselves at their feet and ask them to forgive us.’ – ‘I think that might scare them.’ Our leaders are easily scared.

I keep a mental list of W.’s favourite questions, which he constantly asks me so as to ask himself. ‘At what point did you realise that you would amount to nothing?’; ‘When was it that you first became aware you would be nothing but a failure?’; ‘When you look back at your life, what do you see?’; ‘How is it that you know what greatness is, and that you will never, ever reach it it?’

‘What does it mean to you that your life has amounted to nothing?’, W. asks me with great seriousness. – ‘I never expected it to amount to something!’ – ‘Yes you did. You’re the type.’ Another question, a very serious issue for W.: ‘Why have your friends never made you greater?’ This is W.’s great fantasy, he admits: a group of friends who could make one another think. ‘Do I make you think?’, I ask him. – ‘No. You’re an idiot.’

Then: ‘what do you consider to be your greatest weakness?’ W. answers for me: ‘Never to come to terms with your lack of ability. Because you haven’t, have you?’ – ‘Have you?’ W. wonders for a moment. – ‘No.’ I ask him what is most distorted about his understanding of the world. ‘I have this fantasy of being part of a community, and this prevents my individual action.’ And then, dolefully, ‘I don’t work hard enough.’

But he works night and day, I tell him. – ‘Oh compared to you, I work. Compared to you, we’re all busy.’ W. likes to berate me for my lack of work. ‘What time did you get up to work this morning?’ – ‘Seven.’ – ‘I was up at five. At – five!’, says W. But he laments the fact that he watches television in the evenings. He used to work in the evenings, he said. In fact, he worked all the time. A room with a bed and a desk and his books, that’s all. ‘That was my peak’, he says. ‘When are you going to peak? Are you peaking now? Is this it?’

W. doesn’t know how I can live with myself. ‘Why don’t you do any work? Why? Send me something. Something you’ve written. Stop writing your stupid blog. How much time do you spend on it?’ An hour a day, I tell him. ‘Well that’s not too bad.’ He remembers how much I used to publish. ‘Of course publishing is not work’, he says, ‘nor is writing.’ You have to read, W. insists. He gets up in the morning, very early, to read. When he can’t sleep, he’s up straightaway, and to read.

In the evening, before bed, he reads Krasznahorkai, but in the mornings, he’s up long before the dawn to read philosophy. ‘And what are you doing at that time in the morning?’ – ‘I’m asleep, like sensible people! Besides, some of us have to work!’ It’s true, W. has come late to administration. He managed to avoid bureaucracy until recently. It gets him down. I, on the other hand, he observes, am a very gifted bureaucrat. ‘It takes a particular kind of person to be good at that sort of thing’, he says. I’m very organised, I tell him. I’m an orderly person. ‘It’s to do with being working class’, W. insists. I don’t expect as much from life as him.

W. always flails about when he has to administer. He pings me obscenities. He rings me up, and asks me how much I’ve eaten. This seems to calm him. I always exaggerate. ‘I’ve eaten too much’, I tell him, ‘far too much.’ – ‘Go on, tell me, what’ve you eaten?’ I tell him he’s a feeder. ‘Go on, tell me!’, W.’s getting excited. – ‘Do you see yourself as a nuturer?’, I ask W. – ‘No. Yes. Tell me what you’ve eaten! How fat are you now?’

‘We’re full of joy’, W. says, ‘that’s what saves us.’ But still, we’re realistic. We compare ourselves to our friend R. who’s clearly better than us. ‘He gives, we take.’ – ‘He has ideas, we don’t.’ W. is warming up to the game, ‘he engages with the world, whereas our engagement is mediated by books we half understand.’ – ‘He tries to change the world, whereas we’re parasitical on people who try and change things.’ – ‘He makes people feel witty and intelligent; we make them feel depressed and demotivated.’

We’re both laughing. ‘Every day, for R. something new might occur. But for us, every day confirms that nothing new, for us will ever have happened.’ Laughter: why do find our failings so amusing? But it does save us, we agree on that, as we walk back from the supermarket. We are content with very little: look at us, with a frozen chicken in a bag, and some herbs and spices, and walking back home in the sun. ‘The gift of laughter,’ I say. ‘The gift of idiocy’, says W.

W. and I never make a point of finding someone to discourage. I think they find us, who are usually the people to whom no one wants to speak – there’s no advantage in doing so – and we are always ready. We are friendly, if nothing else, and there’s only a few people we’ll do anything to avoid. And besides, it amuses us when people throw themselves on our mercy. ‘You must be really desperate. We’re the last people you should talk to. It’ll get you nowhere.’

We tend to speak in chorus. What does it matter which one of us said the following, to the young postdoc at a prestigious university. ‘You must leave at once. It’s terrible. You shouldn’t spend another day there. You’ll go mad. You see people like you don’t belong there. They’ll hate you. They probably already do. They’ll sniff you out straightaway. There’s no point. You have to fail. You have to know you’re a failure. That’s absolutely essential. If you don’t know you’re a failure, then nothing.’

W. looks at me. ‘You know you’re a failure, don’t you?’ I agree: ‘oh, very much so.’ – ‘And I’m a failure, aren’t I?’ – ‘Definitely.’ And then to the postdoc: ‘You’re the wrong class, you see. It really matters. We’re the wrong class too, aren’t we?’ – ‘Very much so.’ – ‘The difference is that I can pretend to me middle class, and he can’t’, says W. I agree. ‘He gets all surly’, says W., ‘like an ape.’ – ‘I can’t help it,’ I tell the postdoc.

On the other hand, I saved W. from the high table. – ‘I’m your id.’ W agrees. – ‘Everyone says the same thing: since I’ve been hanging out with that L.—, my work’s really gone downhill.’ We laugh. -‘He’s destroying my career’, says W., ‘really. He’ll destroy yours, too.’ And then we start again: ‘You have to leave straightaway. Get a job somewhere else. Go to the periphery’; and in chorus: ‘always stay at the periphery.’

More recently, another stray joined her destiny to ours. ‘Do you like to network at conferences?’, W. asks her. She looks at us both. We laugh. – ‘Of course you don’t!’ Why else would she be hanging out with us? We decide she must be undergoing a crisis; they often are, those who join our table. Still, we are on hand to give out advice. ‘Never listen to us. We give bad advice, don’t we?’ – ‘Very bad.’ But still, she listens, as the postdoc did a few years previously. ‘We must have the air of those in the know’, I say. – ‘We have the air of idiots’, says W.

We hold court in the bar. ‘We’ll be in the bar!’, we tell everyone. – ‘Constancy is always admired,’ I tell W. He agrees. – ‘People need to know where they can find you.’ Days pass in the bar. It requires stamina and pacing. We are calm drinkers, and full of amiability. There are only a few people we absolutely want to avoid.

W. likes to ask questions when people join us. ‘What you’re favourite colour?’ The postdoc’s not sure. – ‘Puce’, I say. – ‘What colour’s that then? Get me another beer.’ Sometimes, at my encouragement, W. tells us about his recurring dream. ‘I’m in a car, driving along, which is funny because I can’t drive. I’m on a big motorway.’ – ‘That’s it?’ – ‘Yes. Whenever the dream begins, I always think, here I go again.’ He turns to me. – ‘Do you have any recurring dreams?’ – ‘No.’ – ‘Oh.’

In some company we’re a bit desperate, and flail about for conversation.  ‘What’s your favourite drink?’, W. asks. And then we speak of ours. – ‘Plymouth Gin. But get the old bottle. It’s changed now.’ – ‘They’re going for the American market. There are adverts on the underground.’ And then we speak of Martinis. ‘At the Plymouth Gin cocktail bar, they import three different kinds of Vermouth.’

W’, I can see, is getting desperate, and needs calming down. ‘I’m becoming hysterical’, he says. We should go out and find good cocktails, I decide. It will restore our sense of purpose. As we walk, I remind him of the qualities of our friends and allies. W. is cheered. I sing him a snatch of a favourite song, and he joins in, happy again.

We wander through shady streets, looking for caiprenias. ‘I think we should find someone else to discourage,’ I tell W., when we are refreshed. But W. is suddenly in a pensive mood, and wants to wander town very slowly, with his hands behind his back.

‘This is a terrible town’, I say. He agrees. ‘But what is it that makes it so terrible?’ We muse on this for a time. ‘It was rebuilt to look exactly like it was, that’s the problem’, W. decides, and compares it unfavourably to Plymouth, which made no attempt to do so. ‘Everything here’s so fake.’ But then I remind of Warsaw, and how we liked it there. ‘That’s because it was obviously fake.’

The wines here are particularly bad. The previous night, a friend of ours worked his way through all of them, ordering a glass of each from the menu. In the end the waiter sat down with us and told us the bar was terrible. He was Polish, and keen to try his English: ‘my heart, how do you say it?’ (he makes the gesture, and we say ‘aches’) ‘aches for you. Go somewhere else.’ I ask W. to tell me about his recurring dream as we walk. He does, and it makes me laugh.

‘Inanity saves us,’ says W. I agree. It’s like a spiritual strength we draw from within. ‘Empty chatter’, says W., ‘that’s the key.’ We are masters of chatter and fill our days and nights with it. There are several conversational defaults. ‘Tell me about your stomach,’ W. says. I tell him of its current condition and W. muses on its causes. We engage in speculations about digestion, lifestyle and diet. ‘You go out too much’, says W. ‘if I had your lifestyle, I wouldn’t last a day.’ I ask him if he thinks he’s made of sterner stuff. ‘We’re weak. We’re the runts of the litter.’

Sometimes we meditate on our weaknesses. ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ muses W. We both know the answer: literature. If only we knew mathematics. If only we were that way inclined. W. has books about maths, and every year he tries to read them. ‘I can never do differential equations,’ he says. It’s like Greek: every year he tries to learn, but falls at the aorist. ‘The aorist breaks me every time’, says W., dramatically. We list the names of our friends who are good at maths and sigh. ‘They’ll amount to something’, says W., ‘we won’t.’

‘But what we do have’, says W., ‘is joy. We are essentially joyful.’ I agree. ‘We are content with very little’, W. says, ‘it doesn’t take much to keep us happy.’ – ‘Pork scratchings and a fourpack’, I say. ‘Or chicken. Remember when I made you chicken?’ I do remember. W. was amazed. ‘You were ecstatic,’ he says, ‘I’ve never seen you so happy.’ – ‘Chicken does that to me,’ I tell him, ‘and that was particularly good chicken’. W. had spent the whole day preparing it, first cutting out a recipe from a magazine, and then going with me to the supermarket to get the ingredients, and finally letting it cook all afternoon. He remembers my excitement lovingly. He likes to see me eat. ‘You’re so greedy’, says W.

The inane are happy, we agree. Not for us all the talk of desiring desire; we are quite content, as idiots are. ‘I think that’s what you’ve given me,’ says W., ‘idiocy.’ I agree it’s my great gift to the world. ‘It’s very pure, your idiocy’, says W. I agree, and explained how it was honed for years in the cellar of the house I shared with monks. ‘Your monk years,’ says W., who also had his monk years. We tell our monk stories to others, never to each other; we are already agreed on monks, on the subject of monasteries and so on.

I ask W. how his religious turn is progressing. ‘It’s abating a bit’, he tells me. Last year, he felt drawn back to the church. W. wasn’t brought up religiously, he explained, but when he was thirteen he suddenly demanded to be taken to church and became very devout. ‘You were never religious were you?’ -Never for a moment.’ – ‘It’s the purity of your idiocy. It saved you.’

The other day, on the phone, I told W. there had been much speculation about us on the internet. ‘You and your stupid blog,’ said W., ‘but I always said your talent was comic.’ He doesn’t read the blog, W. says, except when he’s really, really bored. ‘It’s so pretentious!’ W. thinks my weakness is wanting to be loved. ‘That’s why you do it, keep a blog.’ He admits to be amused by the line, ‘Idiots always come in pairs‘, and by the speculations about the relationship between us on the net. ‘Haven’t they got anything better to do?’, says W.

For his part, he has been lost in bureaucracy. He speaks again about his recent illness, the most ill he’s ever been. ‘I don’t know how Kafka wrote when he was ill’, says W. When he was ill, he was farther from writing The Trial than he’s ever been, W. says. He’d been delirious. I was ill, too. ‘You’re never really ill’, says W., ‘you just whine. You’re a whiner.’ He’s the same, he admits. ‘Men are all whiners.’

Sometimes, there come to our table those who hate everything about them. ‘You’re in the right company’, we tell them, and buy them a drink, or get them to buy us one. ‘The point is not even to try to engage.’ – ‘Give up now’: that’s our advice, jointly delivered. ‘There’s no hope for you, you have to know that.’ – ‘We do, and look at us.’ – ‘We’re essentially joyful’,  says W. – ‘It’s because of our inanity. It protects us’, I say. Soon, our table guests are cheered. – ‘See, it doesn’t have to be so bad!’ Hours pass in the bar. – ‘The key is pacing’, we advise.

Once we kidnapped a plenary speaker and brought him to the pub. We drank and I ordered plate after plate of cumberland sausage just for the amusement of it. Our table, and the one we pull over to ours, is covered in plates of Cumberland sausage. ‘Look at all those sausages!’ says W. to the speaker, ‘I hope you’re hungry.’

Later, wandering back to the campus, we get lost in the fog, the speaker and us. Where are we going? ‘We’ll never get out of here’, we tell the speaker. ‘You’ll be trapped forever with us, going round and round.’ I ask W. to tell us about his recurring dream to pass the time. And W. asks the speaker, ‘Do you have any recurring dreams?’, and a little later, ‘What’s your favourite colour?’

‘These are truly the last days …’ W. is making me listen to Godspeed’s Dead Flag Blues again. ‘Shut up and listen.’ I play this to the students, he says. And he makes them watch Bela Tarr.

The last days! What are we going to do? ‘We’ll be the first to go, says W., we’re weak. Gin?’ Yes to gin, no to the apocalypse. What time is it? Already late, though you can never be sure in the shuttered living room.

I rang W. today to tell him the damp is receding. True, the air is still full of water and little spores of mildew – no doubt of that, but the plaster is lightening, there at the edges where it was most soaked. And the walls run with water no longer. All the same, I’m anxious: am I not in some deep and intimate way linked with my damp? Does it render safely external some perfidious inward state? Now I’ll have to confront the true horror, I was going to tell W. on the phone (he wasn’t about …)

In truth, I depend on my damp, I was going to tell him. It defines me. When I come in the evenings, it’s there, just as it is in the mornings, when I depart. The damp: soaked through the plaster, brown, and in places, greeny-blue. Damp saturating brick and plaster, and devouring the former from within like acid, the plumber said, and the brown and the greeny-blue spreading like a vast bruise. What sin had I committed? What had gone wrong?

What, if there’s no damp, I would have said to W., will I write about here? What will there be to write about, if there’s no damp? The apocalypse, perhaps – there’s always that, but it’s too vast, and too diffuse. The damp is close, the apocalypse everywhere, far and near – but far, even when it comes near. It’s causes are complex; the cause of damp, simple. I want a simple correlate to my inner state, a simple call to externalise in writing what is wrong within.

Do you think I’m rotting inside?, I would have said to W. Have I been cursed? If so, the damp and I are mirrors of one another. I, too, am bruised – but inwardly, and justly. Bruised inside, and because of some great sin, some wrongness, that nevertheless lies at the seat of my identity. It all went wrong somewhere, I tell myself. I took a wrong path. And then the damp began; damp sprang up all around me; all surfaces became wet, and brown, and greeny-blue, just as there was something dreadfully wrong inside me.

My God, your stomach, says W., who is always amazed by its delicacy, its constant ferment. You’re always ill! And it’s true. Pain – from an inward bruise. I’ve been beaten there – and rightly so. I deserved to be beaten, and inside, where no one will see. And I even liked to be beaten thus – it was a kind of relief, an answer, to a general feeling of guilt. Somewhere, at some time, I’ve committed a terrible wrong, I was going to tell W.

But still, the damp is retreating; the plaster is less soaked; the walls no longer run with water, though the new cabinets are still full of mildew and the whole flat smells of wet and rotting. Yes, the oldest smell, the most familiar one: the great rotting of everything, the great saturation. Away for a few days, my return confirmed it: home, for me, will always be the smell of damp, and that first of all. Open the door – yes, the old smell, breathe it in, along with the spores of mildew, ah yes.

I think I will always associate damp with Lacanian psychoanalysis. For it is only at this point, when the damp has returned most forcefully, after the damp proofing, after the visit by the Loss Adjuster (who hasn’t called back), that I’ve begun to get some idea of psychoanalysis. Piles of Zizek beside the bed, which I go through one book after another. Three Finks. A few Lacans. A handy psychoanalytical dictionary – all this will help me with my review, I know that. But it is all changing my relationship to my damp, I know that, too.

Can W. save me? I want to get him to speak about the apocalypse. ‘It’s all over’ – that’s what I want to hear. ‘These are truly the last days’: I want to hear that. Because I fear the damp’s retreat just as I fear its return. Perhaps it is that the damp is returning to itself to regather its strength: withdrawing only to bloom once again across my walls and ceiling, only more magnificently this time, with a new palette of colours. What colours this time? What richnesses? Yes, the damp is regathering itself to return, with more force, with more splendour, and with new and splendid spores to send out into the air.

‘It’s Lacan!’ I wanted to tell W. ‘It’s Zizek! They’re changing me!’ I wanted to tell him. And it’s true: I’m not used to their world. It’s buffeting me. Somewhere in the walls, the plumber told me, a pipe has burst and it’s rotting the bricks from inside. And now my stomach aches and I feel nauseous. Rotting from inside! For all my reading, I can’t keep Lacan and Zizek in my head, I would have told W. I’m not sure where it’s going. Somewhere – I know that, but where it is I’m not sure, that’s what I would have said. I think it’s hollowing something out in me, and that’s why my stomach hurts, I wanted to tell him.

Crumbled brick and wood on my work surfaces: the ceiling continues to cave in; the hole is still wide open. What’s up there? Something terrible. Something dark. A slice between the flats, open. I hear the voices of the tenants upstairs echoing there, ghostly, so I can’t make out what is said. Yes, there is something terrible there, the source of all damp, between the flats.

I’m surprised their washing machine hasn’t come through, said the Loss Adjuster, who’s yet to call back. What’s going on? What negotations? Perhaps she’s arranging for the builders to come and tear everything out. Start again! Get down to the brick! There’s to be drying equipment. And perhaps the kitchen units are to be replaced.

She warned me I wouldn’t be able to cook. I said: I don’t mind!, and meant it. For months, I said, there was no electricity in the kitchen. Nothing worked; I couldn’t cook, even if I wanted to. For months! Because of the damp! Because the electricity was affected by the damp! In the end, I had to get the kitchen rewired. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ said the electrician. – ‘Not even in an old house?’ – ‘Never,’ he said.

Lacan and Zizek are behind this somehow, I decide. They’ve brought it on; they’ve exacerbated it. My stomach is in ferment. Vague nausea. And a vague, encompassing feeling of guilt. It’s my fault – but what have I done? But then without my guilt – what am I? What will I have to write about? Are these really the last days of damp?

1. One of us is dragging the other down, W. and I decide, but which one? Is it him or me? Of course I think it’s me, and so does he. But I think he likes being dragged down. A friend of his, who had held out great hopes for him noted that since he’s been hanging out with me, his work’s really gone downhill. I like to think that’s my gift to you, I tell W., laughing.

Of course, W. had great hopes in me, once, which were part of his larger hopes of building a larger intellectual community. W. often speaks movingly of those hopes and how they were dashed, and how I played a large role in dashing them. Do you remember, he says, when I gave you that opportunity of speaking for a whole afternoon to some of the most interesting and intelligent people in philosophy? He pauses for dramatic effect. I know what’s coming. You ruined it, didn’t you? You completely spoilt it!

That was the last of those meetings, W. observed, that used to held over two days with only three speakers speaking. And you were one of them, says W. I invited you. And then what? ‘Disaster’, I say cheerfully, remembering it all. ‘But I was ill.’ W. communal dreams fell apart, just as his great hopes for me, and for all of us fell apart.

There’s still our collaboration, of course, W. admits, but that is slowly taking us downhill. We’ve worn out everyone’s patience, says W. Everyone’s tired of us. W. is also alarmed by my new surly turn. When asked a question after one of our talks, I speak for as short a time as possible, churlishly and without concession. W., meanwhile, is ceremoniously polite, and has to overcompensate for my surliness. I tell him I find this very funny. I like it when you flail about, I tell him.

For his part, he likes to turn to me when I am least awake and ask me, before an audience, a deliberate and pointed question. He’s always amazed by my recuperative powers. I can always think of something to say, and quickly. You manage to sound intelligent, says W., how do you do it? I tell him it’s shamelessness pure and simple. And I can think on my feet, I tell him. I’ll say that for myself, I tell him, I can think on my feet. Or I used to be able to. I think that’s going, too.

I remind W. that we’ve rejected a prestigious invitation to speak or two. Even to promote our own work, and in London. Yes, we turned it down, that opportunity, and that was a great moment. ‘Our greatest moment’, says W. But then we remember with great solemnity how we’ve encouraged those truly intelligent minds amongst us to carry on with their work. We pause and say their names like magic talismans.

By a strange turn, I end up inspecting W.’s teaching. He draws diagrams for the students, two stick men. What was he explaining? Hegel and religion, I think. This is Lars, he says, and draws a tiny cock on one of the stickmen, and this is me, he says, and draws a huge cock on the other. Why do you think we’re so puerile?, he asks me later. We’ve always cursed our sense of humour. We’re not witty, we know that. It lets us down. We disappoint people ceaselessly.

2. I know nothing irritates W. more than sociobiology, so I always make a special effort to read up on the latest sociobiology before I see him. What have you been reading?, he asks. I run down the list of titles I’ve committed to memory. Why Men Lie and Women Cry, I tell him. It’s good, you should read it. I learnt all kinds of things. I tell him what I’ve learnt at great length until he holds his hands over his ears and rocks back and forth.

Stuck in a German airport for six hours, I know this is a special opportunity to get on W.’s nerves. Six hours!, I say with relish. Oh my God, says W. I’m concerned about Lindsay Lohan, I tell W. – ‘Who’s Lindsay Lohan?’ – ‘She’s getting so thin. Like Nicole Ritchie.’ – ‘Who’s Nicole Ritchie?’ W. tries to hide behind a newspaper. ‘W. – I’m concerned about Mischa Barton.’ He doesn’t say anything. ‘W., W., Mischa Barton! I’m concerned about her!’ He puts down the paper and looks at me over his glasses. – ‘Shut – the fuck – up.’

Six hours! We don’t have much money between us. How are we going to spend our time? ‘You go that way and I’ll go that way’, says W., pointing in opposite directions. But of course it’s his fault we’re stranded here. ‘So, what shall we talk about?’, I ask W. ‘What have we left undiscussed? What have we learnt from our trip? What have you learnt about yourself? How has your thought advanced? Are you dreaming of your magnum opus? When do you think you’ll write it? Have you abandoned all hope that you’ll write it, or do you still think you’ll write it? Do you think you have a magnum opus in you? Go on, I’ll bet you do.’

W. seems panicky. I’ll have to calm him down. ‘Remember the ‘Realitatpunkt‘, I tell him. In ungrammatical German, it directs us towards what is firm and certain in our world – our hatred of X. Remember that hatred, and rebuild the world back up from that. ‘Focus’, I tell W., who is flailing.

Alternatively, in these moments, I sing to W., knowing he can never help but sing along with me. Like a disturbed child, rocking back and forth, he needs order and regularity to restore his mental health. So I sing, ‘hey, little W., hey little W., thank you for not letting go of me, when I let go of you.’ It’s our version of ‘No More Bad News’ by Bonnie Prince Billy.

Sometimes I sing our version of ‘A Hit’ by Smog. ‘You’re not going to think anything so why even bother – with it. You’ll never be – Franz Kafka. You’ll only ever be a Jean-Luc – Nancy …’ W. can never help joining in, and this restores continuity to his thoughts. ‘You were stuck for a while, weren’t you?’

For my part, I lapse into stammering, and can’t get a word out for several minutes. W. is convinced I’ve had a series of minor strokes. ‘Your decline – it’s alarming.’ But he thinks stammering is another of my many affectations. W. is convinced I have dozens. Why do you sit with your hands beneath your thighs?, he asks me, outraged. And why do you keep touching your chest? It’s rude. No one likes it. Don’t you think you should give it up?

3. We’re too puerile to be true European intellectuals, we’ve decided. W. lived in Strasbourg for a while, it was beautiful, but he couldn’t stand it. ‘I’m too puerile’. But, visiting Strasbourg this year, we walked along the river without a puerile thought in our heads. The city had silenced us. We drank wine from tumblers, quietly. W. spoke French softly. We were happily quiet.

‘I think we’re cured,’ I tell W. ‘I think we should live here.’ It’s true – we are quieter, softer people, real intellectuals. But later, when we get hopelessly lost in Strasbourg puerility returns. When we find the station, we sit in an antechamber and do hysterical impressions of people we’ve met. ‘What’s wrong with us – this is terrible – my God!’

Then, on another trip, as we are borne through Poland on an old style communist train (as we imagine), being brought beer after beer by a steward, we know we’ll never belong to the continent whizzing by us. ‘They’re different from us.’ What went wrong in our country? What happened to us? Who can we blame? W. becomes hysterical. I sing to him. He calms down.

In Freiburg, the Americans seem very earnest to us. ‘We’re not like them, either.’ We like them, they wear caps and are very serious. ‘Serious young men and women’, says W. as we drink our morning beers in the sun. They’re all going on a daytrip, in their caps, all fresh and innocent, we imagine. ‘They’ve never seen anything like it,’ we decide, ‘all this old stuff.’

Passing through the German countryside on the train, we notice station names from Kafka’s Diaries and other books. Europe! Everything has happened here! All the great men and women have criss-crossed the continent! Of course they belonged here, as we do not. W., who was to be my guide, knowing this part of Europe quite well, is as lost as I am. ‘We don’t belong here. They’re better than us’, looking round frantically at the other passengers. ‘They’re so calm and quiet.’ – ‘Europeans, not like us.’

I sing him a snatch of another song. W. likes to say that before a course of action, he asks himself what Kafka would do. – ‘What do you think he would make of us, sitting here?’, I ask him. – ‘We’re the two assistants in The Castle.’ – ‘Or Blumfeld’s bouncing balls.’ – ‘He had two assistants as well, didn’t he?’ – ‘Idiots always come in pairs’, I tell W.

W. is growing his hair. ‘It’s what the kids are doing’. The kids are looking very gentle, we agree. -‘It’s the age of Aquarius.’ – ‘So why aren’t you growing yours? Go on, grow it!’ This as we mount the Hoe from the town side. ‘The sea makes me happy,’ says W., ‘does it make you happy?’

It does. The whole panorama, from Mount Batten to Mount Edgcombe, the far off break with the lighthouse at one an end, and, because it’s a very clear day, the very far lighthouse, that can be seen standing blue against the horizon. And then the various islands, large and small. And the whole sweep of water, very blue under the very blue sky: here we are again!

We go down to drink something in a cafe. We talk about the End. How’s it going to come? W. defers to me on this topic. ‘The North Atlantic Drift stopped for a few days in 2005’, I tell him. ‘We’re doomed’, says W. – ‘But the economic catastrophe will come before the ecological one.’ – ‘We’re fucked!’

Recently, W.’s been ill. ‘I’ve never been so ill’, he says, ‘I had a temperature of 105.’ But he didn’t have an ideas, W. says. Not like Kafka, or Blanchot. He was just ill, and wailed, night and day. Later, when I catch W.’s illness, I, too, wail. I demand he bring me Lempsip to where I am reclined on his cough. ‘You’re not a stoic, are you?’, says W. Neither of us are stoics. We’re whiners. ‘There’s no strength in us. We’re the runts of the litter.’

As we walk home, lads shout at us from a passing car. ‘It’s my hair’, says W., ‘you have to get used to it, if you grow your hair. Great, isn’t it?’ I tell him he looks like his father from the 70s, which I saw in his photo album. W. agrees. ‘Don’t you think something has gone wrong with our lives? That we’ve gone off course?’ – ‘Definitely’, says W.

We are in the tulip garden at Mount Edgcombe, where W. comes sometimes to read Kafka. ‘Where are the tulips?’ – ‘It’s the wrong season, you idiot.’ Autumn crisp and blue all around us. To get there, you have to go past the Orangery and then past the geyser – then of course there is the boat which crosses from the pier that leads out from the street with the naval barracks.

We like sitting on the low wooden boatseats and looking towards the redeveloped Naval Dockyards where we went to see if we could look at a flat and we wanted to be taken to be a wealthy couple. But they saw through us right away, and no one would show us around. That was a few months ago – summer – and we were feeling especially inane.

Now it is autumn when there are no tulips, and I photograph W. sitting on the bench where he comes to read Kafka in the gardens of the old country house. The last Duke of Edgcombe, W. tells me, married a barmaid from the pub, and had to sell up the whole estate, so the city bought it. It’s a miracle, we agree, as we walk out along the shore to where the path rises up to pass through the woods.

It was here the Dukes and their guests would charge their carriages in the darkness, imagining they were in some Gothic romance. There’s even a faux-ruined folly built on the hill, very unconvincing in the autumn sun. We know nothing about trees or nature, but W. suspects I might be a woodsman, because I am confident among the brambles and fallen trees.

A landslide took the woods with it; some trees still stand, growing at a slant, though most are fallen. The path has been diverted, but W. prefers the old route. It’s slow going – very overgrown – and, where the cliff has completely collapsed, you have to scramble across scree. All the while, we manage to keep up our chatter, like birds. Is there anything we’ve not said?

A weekend with W., and we do our best to fill our days with inane chatter. Increasingly absurd questions probing every aspect of life: ‘Do you think you’re a nurturer?’; ‘Have you got leadership potential?’; ‘What, do you think, was your biggest mistake?’; ‘At what point did you know you were a failure?’, and even better, we had someone before whom we could parade our ridiculous, half-formed ideas on every topic.

Whole days pass in chatter, even when I catch W.’s flu and have to lie in his sofa in the upstairs lounge. W. comes and sits at the sofa’s end and we watch TV and comment on that. He had been as ill as he had ever been, said W., like Kafka or Blanchot, but he hadn’t thought of anything, he was just ill, and looked after by Sal, who, fortuitously was down for the week. And now he has to look after me.

Does he have paracetamol? Yes he does, he says, but of course he has everything but. I make him make me Lemsip to make up. He brings it up to me in a mug. You’re not ill, says W., you’re just tired. The first night, we’d been out to dinner and then to a nightclub and danced, and after that back to the house to dance some more. We worked out some formation moves.

The next day, Sunday, the traditional walk to Cawsands through Mount Edgcombe, in order, as is also tradition, to forget that the pubs stop serving food at 2.00, which is always about the time we arrive. We have foregone our honey beers in order to eat, but why deny ourselves those earned pints, especially since – another tradition – we had crossed the ravine in W.’s adventure route along to where the cliff had collapsed?

Yes, the usual fiasco, but no one lost or nearly lost as happened last time, with poor R. almost slipping all the way into the sea. In Cawsands we ate pasties instead, and ice cream for afters – and I bought fudge for after that. Then back on the busride that takes you past Whitsands where the holiday chalets cling to the cliff, with the sea on the left side of us and the city opening out on the right.

The next day, Monday, while I was ill, we had a moment of inspiration, and drafted a collaborative project on the back on a newspaper. We knew we had to be quick: soon the tide of inanity would rush forward and claim everything, but for a time, and impressively seriously, we wrote down our ideas and the other thoughts they made us have and then sat back happily. That night, we were made frikadellar and a substitute for rotkohl, and peeled boiled potatoes, Danish style.

What is to become of us? W. always trusts my predictions. I lay down the law. ‘It will happen this way …’ Meanwhile, W. is thinking about chapter two of his new book. He was ill – iller than he’d ever been before, and unable to begin. I tell him I’m reading Lacan and Zizek and all that and he sighs: he’d read all of Lacan, everything he could get hold of, in that period around his peak, more than ten years ago, but he hadn’t understood what he read.

It’s all gone now, he says, as though I’d never read it. W. is amazed at his decline. He works only a couple of hours a day, getting up before dawn, reading, writing, before going to work. I used to work night and day, he tells me. All I had in my room was a desk and a bed. When did the decline begin?

There were several stages, says W. As an undergraduate, he worked very hard and showed great promise. He commanded respect from his peers and much was expected of him. But then came his postgraduate years, the slow fall. He started smoking and drinking heavily to pass the hours. There was little tuition.

True, things picked up again later, when he got his first proper job. For five years, in a room, working. What zeal! He didn’t have a TV; and since he was on a 0.5, barely an hour a week teaching. He learnt Hebrew. He took lengthy notes on everything he read. He had no desire to publish, and if he did, would work for as much as 7 years on a paper. That was before I met you, he said.

7 years! But he likes what he wrote, back then. It seems okay to him. A lot of what he did then he’s forgotten, but he has the notes. His earlier notes, from the time when he wanted to be a writer, he gave away or destroyed. He kept diaries too, like Kafka, but those, too, have disappeared.

At what point did he want to become a philosopher, rather than a writer? He doesn’t know. But isn’t it true you can always hold out, in philosophy, for a late blooming – a Kant-like coming into your powers, years after you would have been put out to retirement in other fields? But he also says it was Kafka who made him both stop writing: how could his own work compare?

For all his work – and he worked very hard – he could not; so he stopped, and gave everything away, or made sure it was destroyed. Still, he muses unhappily, neither of us will get very far as philosophers. You have to know maths to be good at it. He’s stalled at differential calculus, W. says. In fact, he’s stalled at Euclid. He only really feels happy with Pythagoras, and he’s not even sure about that.

He doesn’t know much about surds. Parmenides, says W., he discovered those. No maths, says W., means no philosophy. We talk of our friends who have a background in maths. They might achieve something, says W., but not us.

We repeat the old formula: we’re intelligent enough to know what genius is, but we’re not geniuses! That’s our tragedy: to know we’ll never amount to anything. Still, we did come up with some ideas at the weekend, and we’re pleased with that. In some peculiar way, we’re advancing. By picking ideas from here and adding a few of our own, we getting somewhere. Perhaps.

I’m to transform our notes into an abstract, W. directs. Very well then. Now W. presses me about my own decline. But you never really had a peak, he says. And you don’t really do anything, do you? I’m in my office much more than he is in his, I point out. Yes, that’s true, says W. And besides, I’m reading Lacan and Zizek, and writing reviews. Yes, yes, says W., but what about work – real work!

On Tuesday, I see my second book has arrived by post from the publishers to be reviewed. W. will have to send it out. He sits down and opens it, reading the first lines. Yes – he’s found it – a mistake in the first paragraph. A really dumb mistake: I’d changed ‘ego’ to ‘the "I"’ but still gave the translation, le moi. What idiocy.

You’re depressed now, aren’t you?, says W. Of course W.’s book has mistakes not only in the first paragraph, but in the blurb. We both find this very funny. In the blurb! And after all that proofreading! After reading it again and again and again! I think you should do a third book, says W., that would be funny. Meanwhile, W. is busy writing his introduction. I’m destroying Heidegger, he says.

W.’s decline is getting worse. He doesn’t work at night any more, but watches trash TV. And now, like me, he’s bought Civilisation 3. What appalls me, he says, is I play Civilisation 3 with more seriousness than I work. I tell him I’ve given up. The computer cheats at higher levels. There’s no point playing. So what do you do instead?, says W., oh yes, Lacan and Zizek, I forgot.

For his part, W. is teaching Leibniz next year. He only has so long to understand the maths. He taught Spinoza last year, and this year Leibniz. Meanwhile, he’s going to read Hermann Cohen. What am I going to read? I tell him I’m rereading Henry Green at the moment. Caught. It’s so lovely. And then – Party Going. And then Back, which I’ve never read. What do you like about it?, says W. – It’s so pretty. That’s one of his failings, he explains to our friend who cooked for us, he likes pretty things.

He, meanwhile, is still reading Kraznohorkai. Bela Tarr’s new film has run into problems, W. tells me. His producer’s left. We should send him some money, we decide. Ah, Bela Tarr!  In the cocktail bar, we drink Martinis and then – something new – so called English caiperenas, with Plymouth Gin instead of cachasa.

More gin! We’d had a few glasses that afternoon (Saturday), in the red front room with the shutters, sitting as usual around the table, with pork scratchings from the corner shop. But we’re seasoned drinkers. Then to the restaurant, then the nightclub, and then home for more dancing. ‘Toxic’, that daft instrumental off Yoshimi, something by Kenicke (W.’s choices), and I choose Prince – ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’.

Musical movement’s very important, I tell W. The next day, I instruct him about the limbic system. In mammals, unlike reptiles, physical contact is important. W. defers to me in several areas: on health and nutrition in general, and on the decline of academia. On the latter, I’m particularly good, he says, I’m always right.

‘Life!’, I exclaim, as I often do. – ‘What’s wrong with you?’, says W. – ‘Nothing’s wrong, quite the contrary.’ Life: how did we end up here, and living these kinds of lives, and doing these kinds of things? And whatever’s going to become of us?

Early morning, at the airport. ‘Beer,’ W. commands. ‘You can pay for this.’ Later we drink beer in a railway carriage, passing through the German countryside. ‘What do you think of Europe?’, says W. I look around. – ‘Very flat.’

The best train journey, of course, was the long one from Warsaw to Wroclaw. Small round tables like in a cafe, but in the dining carriage of a train. And waiter service. We drank, steadily. Europe passed by the window, flat and green. All was well: our guide was with us, we felt secure, safe; like small children with their parents, we had nothing to worry about.

This time, we have look after ourselves. Of course, it’s already gone wrong. We steel ourselves: we have to concentrate. Are we on the right train? Is it going in the right direction? Left to fend for ourselves, we become panicky. Then the conductor comes round to take our tickets. Alles klar, he says, in a voice that is infinitely calm. He soothes us. Alles klar: we’re in safe hands, this is a safe country. Over the next few days, we will only have to repeat his phrase to feel safe; it watches over us like a guardian angel.

W. and I know we don’t really belong in Europe. But walking through the boulevards at Strasbourg, we grow calm and quiet. We find a bistro and drink Alsation wine from tumblers. W. speaks soft French, his voice lowered. ‘Bon.’ But we don’t belong here. It’s not long before inanity returns. ‘Why can’t we stop ourselves?’

W. once lived in Strasbourg for six months. He could have stayed forever in the calm boulevards. Why didn’t he stay? He missed the British sense of humour, he says. Self-deprecation, the deprecation of others as a sign of affection: how did we, the British, ever become so contorted? But we decide this is our saving grace. ‘We don’t take ourselves seriously.’

Sometimes our inanity frustrates us. Why couldn’t we have a more sophisticated sense of humour? But then, at other times, we know our inanity, in its simplicity, will get us through anything.

Every morning, away from the other delegates to drink orange pekong tea in the town square. We are simple and joyful creatures, content with inane chatter, which always arrives from nowhere and bears us along for the afternoon. If only our stomachs ached less! If only we were less bleary from drinking! ‘I haven’t had a single thought all conference,’ says W. I search my head: no, neither have I.

Sometimes, to our amazement, the clouds part and we are able to think. There was a moment on the train, coming back from Strasbourg. We held forth for some minutes, speaking clearly, calmly, sketching our philosophical task. W. was transported. ‘That’s exactly it! Write it down.’ But I’d forgotten my notebook. ‘We’ll have to remember it!’ But of course, we didn’t.

Then, on another occasion, walking out on a promotory at Mount Batten, we had another few minutes of insight. W. was amazed. In the water taxi heading back to the city, I wrote down a few notes. But when we look back at them, we have no idea what we were thinking. Today, just like any other, we are both perfectly free of thoughts; we’re like smooth stones, worn down in the river of our inanity. – ‘Alles klar.’ – ‘Yes, alles klar.’

W. is convinced his IQ is a few points higher than mine. ‘Just a few points – it makes all the difference.’ Evidence: he can be witty, whereas I am just filthy. Still, W. likes my filth. ‘You’re my id’, he says. I give him permission to act badly, he says. He likes my new paper giving style. ‘You’re so truculent’, he says. ‘A truculent ape.’

Bored, I ask W., since he is certain of his IQ, to rank our friends in order of intelligence. He considers each in turn. ‘So you put X. at the top?’ – ‘Why, where would you put him?’ – ‘And where am I on the list?’ – ‘At the bottom.’

We return to our favourite theme. Our problem is, we’re not quite intelligent enough. We can appreciate thinking, but we’re not thinkers. Faces pressed up against the glass, and no one to let us in. ‘But at least we know our limits’, says W., ‘we have that. And at least we can support the thinkers amongst us.’ Yes, that’s our role. To remember our limits and to support those who are not bound by them.

Where did it all go wrong? We agreed: literature. The literary trap. Perhaps we should have been writers. But although we appreciate writers, we cannot write. ‘You have a comic talent,’ says W. ‘But when you try to write seriously, it’s terrible.’

Conversation falls to Kafka. ‘I always ask myself what Kafka would do,’ says W. ‘He wouldn’t keep a blog, that’s for certain. ‘

In a pub by Mount Edgcombe, W. speaks of his greatest temptation. ‘I thought if we had a community of friends, thinkers, then thought might be possible.’ Was he wrong? He was wrong. ‘Look at us’, he says. W. seems morose. Sometimes I like to sing him a snatch of ‘No Bad News’ from the new Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album. ‘Hey little Will …’ W. joins in, happy again. ‘But there’s no excuse’, he says. – ‘Except for our low IQs.’

Blah-Feme and I have decided to eat offal every night for two weeks, but it’s hard to find. Rumours of heart sold in Morrisons. Another night, we find cheap liver at Somerfield. But it’s brain, above all, that we’re looking for. Sliced brain, fried. ‘No one eats brain’, says the butcher.

W. phones to find out how it’s going on. ‘How’s offal fortnight?’ – ‘We had midnight haggis the other night. Then midnight kidneys. Then midnight liver. But we can’t get any brain.’ – ‘My God, how can you eat at midnight?’ – ‘That’s when we get in.’ W.’s horrified. ‘And how’s your stomach?’ – ‘Bad, it’s always bad.’ – ‘My God, how fat are you now?’

W. is writing an introductory book, despite the fact that he dislikes introductory books, and has written an essay on disliking introductory books. ‘It’s so bad, it makes me laugh.’ W. is rising very early and opening the book on which he’s writing. ‘I’m ruining it, it’s amazing, really funny.’

W. has been mentioned at an international conference as one of the few people in the world who understand the significance of X. for Y. ‘How does it feel?’ – ‘It’s hilarious.’

‘You really inspired me the other night’, says W., ‘oh nothing to do with your thought.’ – ‘What, then?’ – ‘I bought a bottle of wine and went home and drank it all. That’s how you live, isn’t it?’ 

I’ve sent W. something I’ve written. ‘It fills me with shame,’ I tell him. ‘Shame will survive you, like a dog’, says W., ‘that’s Kafka, isn’t it?’

W. has decided he’s got a higher IQ than me. A few points higher, he says, that makes all the difference. He can be witty, W. points out, but I can’t be witty. You’re just filthy, he says.

W.’s your Jewish mother, says Blah Feme. I tell W. ‘You bring it out in me’, he says.

‘How’s your flat then?’, asks W. There was no electricity for days, I tell him. There was nothing to do at night but sleep. And now the drains are blocked. And the new shower doesn’t work. And they delivered a dishwasher instead of an oven. ‘But is it still damp?’ The plaster’s soaked through, I tell him. I had to sleep with the door open to let it dry. But it’s not going to dry. ‘Why not?’ – ‘It’s the timbers, they’re completely rotten.’ – ‘My God.’ The ceiling caved in, I told him. It was entirely unexpected. So I had to get a new ceiling. – ‘My God.’

These are the last days, says W. It’s all finished. Everything’s so shit, says W., but we’re happy – why is that? Because we’re puerile, I tell him. Because we’re inane.

A few days in my company, says W., and he feels iller than he’s ever felt. All that drinking, he says. And that eating. How do you do it?

When R., who is generosity itself, let us into his flat, we rushed into his bedroom and lay on his bed. Put on his clothes, I said, or W. did. W. pulls R.’s jeans over his trousers. I pull on R.’s jumper over my jacket. R. tells us off. I take pictures of W. We’re laughing. Why do we do things like this?, says W. What’s wrong with us?

On the train heading North, we read the papers. Our stomachs hurt.

We know what genius is, says W. aphoristically, but we know we’re not geniuses. It’s a gift, he says. We can recognise genius in others, because we don’t have it ourselves. We talk about X. He’s our leader, says W. But we musn’t tell him. We’ve always agreed we need a leader. Someone to inspire us, we agreed five years ago in a square in Wroclaw. Our mistake was to tell our leaders that they were our leaders. That scared them off. 

Why don’t you get rid of that jacket?, says W. You’ve been wearing it for years. It makes you look fat. Look – it’s completely shapeless.

W. is wearing a flowery shirt. Look at us in our flowery shirts, says W. Fat and blousy, and in flowery shirts, and everyone else slim and wearing black. What’s wrong with us? We’re buffoons.

I don’t believe you really like jazz, says W. It’s another of your affectations. Go on then, tell me about jazz, says W. Explain modal jazz to me. He sits back, ready to be amused. I try. W. laughs. That’s not it, he says. It’s an affectation, isn’t it, all this jazz? It’s all affectation with you, isn’t it?

Only one person comes to our paper. We take him to the pub. We make a solemn pact: only when we attract no audience at all will we be able to stop going to conferences.

We drink at the Dolphin, in the old town. ‘You would break the phalanx’: whilst W. is loyal, I am disloyal. ‘Your whole life is a performance’: whilst he is sincere, I am never sincere. ‘You’ve never felt a thing’: whilst he is directly emotional, I am without emotion. ‘Have you ever loved anyone?’ Whilst he is eminently capable of love, I am incapable of love.

Like him, says W., only more so, I do not work hard enough. Like him, only more so, I will be broken by my sense of what is great, and by the fact that whatever I do, I will never be great. Unlike him, I will not have the courage to leave when it will have become clear for the millionth time that I will amount to nothing. 

W. says I have a desire to publish everything I write, but the vast majority of W.’s writing remains unpublished. I have a desire to be loved, which is why I publish so much, but he has no desire to be loved (or at least, it does not compromise his work). But above all, I must work earnestly on another book. It’s the only way you experience your inadequacy, W. tells me. In parts of the second book, he says, I was getting somewhere; but now I will get nowhere. For his part, W. thinks he might be getting somewhere. But he also has a pressing sense of his own inadequacy.

What work are you doing? What are you writing? The blog, W. tells me, has become very pretentious, mannered and self-indulgent. You’re good at comedy, he tells me. Write more about your failure, he tells me. I get up at 7.00 to work, but W. gets up at 6.00 to work (and sometimes earlier). What do you do at 7.00?, he asks me. For his part, W. read Rosenzweig in German. Now he’s writing about Rosenzweig. What are you reading?, he asks me.

Still, W. is perpetually, grindingly disappointed with himself. He suspects I am not as disappointed with myself as he is. In fact, I seem rather pleased with myself, he says. But he, W., is not pleased with himself. We get the water taxi across to Mount Batten. W. is impressed by my moment of illumination: over the course of ten minutes, I had several ideas; the clouds parted.

For the most part, says W., of us, there are only clouds, but then sometimes, for one of us, or both of us, the clouds part. And there was a real sunburst: as we walked along the spit, I speculated aloud on this and on that. Write it down, said W. I wrote a few notes. But it’s like Flowers for Algernon, says W., you’ll forget it all.

Up to the tower. It’s locked. W. tells me of his overwhelming sense of shame. We do nothing, he says. We’re parasites. Time for the pub. Through the boatyard. The moment of illumination has passed. What are we to do with our lives, with our non-careers? Appelfeld sometimes let his characters say, after all, man is not an insect. But we’re insects, says W., we put up with too much.

W. speaks of his dream of a community, of a society of friends who would push each other to greatness. We speak of our absent friends over pints of Bass. If only they were closer! Of what would be capable! They would make us great! Perhaps that is his last temptation, says W., the thought that something would make us great.

Know someone well, spend a lot of time with them, and they speak to you as they speak to themselves. So there is a great deal to learn about W. from the questions he constantly asks me: At what point did you realise that you would amount to nothing?; When was it that you first became aware that you would be nothing but a failure?; When you look back on your life, what do you see?; How is it that you know what greatness is, and that you will never reach it?; What does it mean to you that your life has amounted to nothing?; Why have your friends never made you greater?

A short interview with W. in the pub after lunch: ‘What do you consider your greatest weakness?’ – ‘Never to come to terms with my lack of ability.’- ‘What do you think is most distortive about your experience of the world?’ – ‘I have this fantasy of being a community, and this prevents individual action.’ – ‘What’s motivated you so far?’ – ‘Fear and anxiety.’ – ‘What’s your greatest disappointment?’ – ‘To know what greatness is, and know that I will never, never achieve it, even if everything in my life was right.’ – ‘What is your worst trait?’ – ‘Fear and anxiety cloud all my judgements and relations.’ – ‘What is your greatest academic gift?’ – ‘I don’t think I have any. I see my whole academic career as a crushing failure. I only carry on out of a debilitating fear.’

W. and I compare ourselves to our friend R., who we both agree is better than us. He gives, we take. He has ideas, we plagiarise. He engages with the real world; our engagement is utterly mediated by books we half understand. He tries to change the world; we are utterly parasitical on people who try to change things. He makes people feel witty, funny and intelligent; we make them depressed and unmotivated; we are interested only in asking them why life is disappointing for them. Every day, for R., something new might occur. Every day only confirms for us that nothing new, for us, will ever have happened.

Before I write, every time I write here, I feel like a beginner. How to begin? When will it begin, that writing that will unfold like necessity? You are a beginner, I tell myself, and you will have to learn again how to begin.

When I feel this way, I look out at the yard. Ah, said W., who visited last weekend, the blogging table, and that’s your yard. W. looked through the window. It is disgusting, he agreed. And what’s wrong with your plants? They’re all ill, I said. They look disgusting, said W.

The yard: don’t you see it’s like a reduction?, I said to W. It’s disgusting, he said. R.M., who was also there, disagreed. She said on the phone yesterday she was sorry to miss me repotting plants and planting new ones. I’d been to B & Q, I told her, for my new kitchen and my new bathroom.

A new kitchen! A new bathroom! It’s the damp, I told her. It’s destroyed everything. R.M. likes to watch me repot plants in the sun, just as she likes to watch me busying myself around my flat. And R.M. likes the yard, though she urges me to call it a garden. There’s no soil, tell her. So it’s a yard.

W. agrees that Bela Tarr would use a 20 minute tracking shot on the yard. It’s really disgusting. He sees it. One afternoon, W. and R.M. and I went out to the coast, and walked in the sun from Whitley Bay to North Shields. We admired the derelict buildings. I was still thinking of Sebald. He’d take pictures, I said, but R.M didn’t want to get her camera out. Can you see yourself living here?, I said to R.M. She laughed.

Whitley Bay! W. and I were thirsty. Eventually, we came to the Park Hotel. An old man in a tuxedo served us. I ordered food, and we went out to sit in the sun with a beer. How splendid the meal the man brought out on a tray! What quantities of chips! And a pot of mayonnaise! I was blissfully happy. A Bassett hound sound sat near us, with melancholy eyes. We were in high spirits. Beer! Chips! Mayonnaise! And the sea, all around us. How marvellous!

What happened after that? The Metro home. Did we go out for dinner? Last weekend passed in a haze. W., as in Oxford, was tender. He and R.M. ganged up on me in El Coto. W. ordered a bottle of Cava and then we drank spirits. I got W. the wonderfully prepared black pudding. I am thinking lovingly of it now. What will become of us all?, I said to W. as we walked home.

The next morning, W. rose early to iron his shirt. He put on his suit. Time for his flight. R.M. and I walked him to the Metro, and then we crossed the Tyne Bridge and through the Sage and down to the Baltic. Snacks in the sun. We crossed the river and then went to the Ouseburn Valley for late lunch. Veggie burgers and beer! And then up to the Cumberland for more beer! And then R.M., too, had to go home.

Life! At some time over the weekend, I played the last tracks from Musings of Creekdipper, just as W. had once played me Cat Power and demanded I be quiet. We listened to Victoria Williams. How fragile it all is!, I thought. Our puny bodies! What will become of us? How long do we have?

Conversation with W. He’s reading Radical Thought in Italy. ‘It’s pure DOGMA’, he says. ‘They’re all mates. No quotes, no references, they all have the same ideas and write about them as if they were world-historical’ – ‘That should be a DOGMA rule’. – ‘Exactly. Write about your ideas as if they were categories in Aristotle’. W. sends me a quote:

Forms of behaviour such as opportunism and cynicism derive from this infinite process in which the world becomes no more than a supermarket of opportunities empty of all inherent value, yet marked by the fear that any false move may set in motion a vortex of impotence.

‘You can mull it over in your stupidity’, he says. We have a new rule, now that we’ve become co-writers: we have to give each other a list of books to read. The first one is Radical Thought in Italy. ‘That’s how we should write’, says W. Co-writers: he’s coming to visit me here, and I’ll go and visit him there.

‘I keep getting up early’, I tell him. So is he. 5.00, the pair of us. ‘What do you do when you get up?’, he says. – ‘I’m writing an essay’. ‘Why don’t you try reading? Why don’t you read something?’ – I tell him I’m going downhill. I’ve reached that age in which I can’t do anything: ‘It’s like all these artists who begin well and end up ropey. I could never imagine it, and now it’s happening to me’. – ‘But they produced something before they went downhill. What have you produced? What hill have you climbed? How do you go downhill from downhill?’

I tell him I’ve been reading X. – ‘what did you think?’ – ‘He mesmerises me. He’s everything I’m not; I feel guilty when I read him’. W.: ‘He’s a swan and you’re a bear’.

I tell W. I’ve been feeling ill. it’s my stomach. Perhaps I’m going to die. ‘You’re not going to die. You’re just fat and greedy’. W. says I should read more. ‘I can’t be bothered. I’m getting old’. – ‘You’re not old. 35 – that’s when philosophy begins. When you’re 60 you might have something to say:’ I tell him it’s too late for me. ‘I’m done with it. I’m not writing anymore’. A year ago, W. had said I was nearly running on empty. Now he says it: ‘your tank’s dry. You’re empty’.

He doesn’t like the recent posts. ‘Go back to doing what you do best. Whining. Go back to whining, like an ape crying in his Bovril’. He’s not persuaded. ‘Stop trying to be profound. You’re not profound, you’re an ape’.

Conversation with W., who has wheedled £2,600 from somewhere or other; he’s pleased with himself; he’s serious. We are to Do Things. What are we going to do? Give something to the world, he says, rather than taking. Because that’s what we always do, he says, we take something from the world. Our books are a taking from the world, not a giving to the world. They suck life from the world, rather than give life to it.

No original thought, no contribution to the world of ideas, only commentary, and there are better commentaries around, no question of that. And what of our much vaunted DOGMA movement in philosophy? W. sends me his latest DOGMA piece – it’s all there he says, the whining – that’s what DOGMA is about – the self-pity. Yes, that’s what it’s become, DOGMA, whining and self-pity, with everything dragged back to the ‘I’, the self-pitying and whining ‘I’.

We talk about Bela Tarr. Why don’t we send the money to him, says W. He’s right. Send the money to Bela Tarr. Send it all to him. By that we’d give something to the world. Yes, by that, we’d have given something rather than stealing something. W. asks me about my latest DOGMA piece. It was a disaster, I tell him. A disgrace – nothing worse. I made a real fool of myself, that’s what I told him. It was like performance art, I tell him. I got more and more manic – it was grotesque. A real disgrace, no question of that.

W. is impressed. He’s never heard me say something like that before: a disgrace. He tells me I remind him of the landlord in The Big Lebowski, the performance artist, who dances to Wagner. I tell him he’s like the idiot dancers in Damnation, splashing in the rain and the pools of beer on the floor. That’s what you are, I say, an idiot dancer. W. has the 7 hour Satantango, he says. He’s obsessed by it; it’s all he can think about. He’s going to use the money to visit me, he says. And then I can visit him. And we can watch Satantango, he says. That’s what we’re going to do. Night and day, over and over again: Satantango.

I tell him we should make a film, that’s what we should do. Imagine it! £2,600, and out first feature film. Von Trier’s already made a film called that, he says, when I tell him we should call it The Idiots. The Idiots! Imagine! Sucking life from the world! Taking life and giving nothing! Giving nothing back to the world! No ideas! Nothing creative! We’re anti-creative! We take and do not give! The opposite of creators! Anti-creators, idiots! You’ve achieved a new level in your whining, W. tells me. It’s my great gift to humanity, I say, it’s all I have to give.

He uses non-professional actors, says W. of Bela Tarr. We talk of the great speech in Damnation about madness and coal scuttles. It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen in a film, I tell him. He agrees. And the bit in the mud with the dog, with him barking at the dog. Nothing better. Because that’s where we’ll end up – in the mud, covered in mud, barking! And that’s too good for us! Barking – in the mud!

What else have you been doing?, W. asks me. Nothing. Admin. So’s he. Were you in, working, on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, I ask him? He wasn’t. I was in, doing my admin. W. says he was so alone over Christmas he forgot how to talk. I’m not like you, he says, I don’t need people. I don’t need to be adored, he says. Look at you with your weblog, he says. I write just as much as you do, he says, but I don’t put it all online, he says. I’ve written about Spinoza, says W., and what have you written about? He sends me his lecture notes. He sends me a paper by someone cleverer than us. He sends me his introduction to a special edition of a journal. That’s what he’s been doing. He’s been busy. Not like me. I’ll tell you what your problem is, says W., you’re lazy – l-a-z-y! And you want to be adored! And you’re a binge eater! All you think about is food! And adoration! You want to be adored!

W.: How are we going to get the money to Bela Tarr? Should we go to Hungary ourselves? I tell W. about the jobs in Kazakhstan – should we apply for them? Imagine that – Kazakhstan! It could be the making of us! The regenerators won’t have got their yet! The buying-second-homes lot won’t have got there yet! We should go! But we won’t go, will we?, says W. We’re not going anywhere, are we?, says W.

Bela Tarr made his first film when he was 16, W. says. 16! No chance for us then, he says. 16! Non-professional actors! When did you know?, says W. When did you know you weren’t going to amount to anything? It’s a curse, isn’t it?, says W. Knowing you haven’t really got it. W. says his students had to explain the plot of Damnation to him. He didn’t understand it. This after I asked him to explain the plot. He sold his friends to the police said W. Oh that’s what happened, I said, feeling stupid. But W. hadn’t understood the plot either. His students, whom he says are clever than him, explained the plot. Ah. I saw the film twice, I said, and hadn’t understood it. So had he – twice – and he, too, hadn’t understood it.

DOGMA!, W. says, we invented it, and look what it’s made us into! It’s true – it’s amounted to nothing. But X. liked us, didn’t he?, I ask him. Oh yes, X. liked us, that’s true. Yes, we’ll always have that – X. liked us. Was that our high point?, I ask him. Yes, that was probably it. Downhill from here. I tell W. I’ve already peaked. I’ve done it, I say, I’ve shot my load, there’s no more. But really, says W., who likes a running mate, what are you planning? Tell me, he says, because W. loves a bit of friendly competition, what are you writing? Nothing, I tell him. Not – a – thing. And nor do I intend to. I’ve shot my load, I tell him, that was it. There’s no more.

What’s he working on? Nothing, he says. He’s done his Spinoza lectures, and now he’s editing his special edition. It’s a real pain, says W. He doesn’t like it at all. He whines – it’s a lot of work! And he’s completely sick of Blanchot! He’s had it with him! We should introduce Blanchot to Kazakhstan, I tell him. They won’t have heard of him. We could make out fortunes – in Kazakhstan.

Bela Tarr – he was 16, says W. 16! That’s when he started, says W. When did you first realise you were going nowhere?, says W. When did you really understand you weren’t going to do anything with your life? I knew about Rimbaud, I say, but I wrote nothing when I was 16. I knew about Radiguet – but I wrote no novel by 18. And D.H. Lawrence was a prodigy, I say – but I was no prodigy. And it went on from there, I say, I fell at every fence. At every fence, I took a tumble.

It’s a curse, says W., with great feeling. Yes, we’ve always been united in this. Think of them, the great friendships – Blanchot and Levinas, Foucault and Deleuze, Blanchot and Bataille. And then us – who write on these great friendships – and are friends, that’s true, but for what? Often, in his cups, W. will talk passionately about friendship. It’s all about friendship!, says W. It’s true. I’m carried away. We’re in the only late night bar in Oxford, the only one open after closing time. It’s true, he’s right – friendship. That. But what has it become, friendship, with us? It’s soured. It’s curdled. Nothing was made, nothing was produced, by way of our friendship. The opposite, in fact.

W. and I have a game of over-praising the other. The praise has got to become more extravagant each time. That’s part of DOGMA, says W. DOGMA! What dreams we had for DOGMA! What a good idea it seemed, that night in Oxford! And what has it come to? £2,600. We should send it to Bela Tarr. How can we get it to him? Imagine it – we might be able to redeem ourselves if we can get the money to him! £2,600!

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.

W. on the phone: ‘So you’re meta-whining now?’ – ‘Well, I’ve run out of things to write, it’s terrible’. – So come on then: what’s your latest line of flight? How are you going to escape this time?’ – ‘I tired of that. I’ve no energy to escape’. – What’s happening, then?’ – ‘Nothing. Still on my ‘lost weekend’; nine months left to go’. – ‘How long’s it been?’ – ‘Since May. Nothing substantial since May’. – ‘It’s always like that with you. Everything or nothing’.

‘Look at Steve’s posts. You’re in one’. – ‘I know. You’re not’. – ‘Ah yes, but I’ve interesting things in store’. – ‘What?’ – ‘I’m going up in the world, you’ll see’. – ‘So what’s going on at work?’ – ‘Nothing. It’s all terrible’. – ‘No it’s not, it’s getting better all the time’. – ‘Oh yes, so it is, everything is getting better all the time’. – ‘Quality’s always improving, you know that’. – ‘It has to get better -‘ Both of us together: ‘or someone’s going to get shot’.

Me: ‘It never gets better though, does it?’ – ‘No. It’s getting worse. It’s going to get a lot lot worse’. – ‘We’re doomed, right?’ – ‘Oh yes, finished’. ‘I’ve seen Bela Tarr’. – ‘Oh yes, that’s more like it. There’s a film where these guys end up at the bottom of a pit, covered in shit, completely miserable. That’s where you’ll be, in the pit’. – ‘But you’re be the other guy in the pit. That’s who you are. Covered in shit’. Laughter.

W.: ‘He’s great, Bela Tarr. Total despair. Shit everywhere. Ontological shit, cosmological shit. It’s your life, isn’t it – ontological shit?’ Laughter. – ‘You’re ontological shit’. – ‘No I’m not. You should see my Spinoza notes. They’re great. So what are you lecturing on?’. – ‘Heidegger’. – ‘Again?’ – ‘How much time have I got? Besides it’s R.A.E.-a-rama here. I’m filling in my esteem indicators’. – ‘Oh yes, what are they? I could do with a laugh’. ‘I can’t think of any’. ‘What about humiliation indicators? What about soiling yourself indicators? ‘Buffoonery indicators? Apishness indicators?’. Laughter.

Me: ‘God, I’m bored. And I’m staying in tonight’. – ‘I thought you were out every night’. – ‘No, not tonight, I’ve had enough. I’m staying in and watching more Bela Tarr’. – ‘So what’s your latest fantasy. Go on – tell me. Does it involve the net?’ – ‘It might do’. – ‘It’s a support device for your fantasies, the net. That’s all it is’. Laughter.

W.: ‘Why do you need to be loved so much? Why do you want to be adored?’ – ‘Come on, it’s the opposite, it’s the other way round – don’t you see it?’ – ‘It’s the same thing. It’s exactly the same thing’. I am looking out of the window as I talk. ‘Do you think the world’s going to end soon?’ – ‘Yes. And you’ll be the only one left, in your pit’.

Last night in the pub was like the night before; a double toastie for dinner, tuna and peppers and cheese in white bread and then Speckled Hen. A double toastie for dinner, the Speckled Hen and the music on the free jukebox: The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Joni Mitchell, The Scissor Sisters -. But we are restrained; the night before had been a long one, with blind tastings of different whiskeys – we had lined them up, and only I knew the identities of each one, lined them up, and then drunk from each, ranking our favourites. Why did Lagavulin do so badly, and Talisker so well? Tonight we are restrained and leave before closing time. Tonight, enthusiasm. Books and directors. Bela Tarr – have you heard of him? My companion had heard of him – he has two DVDs. Would he lend them to me? Yes, yes.

Up to the office to lend him my reissues by The Fall from the great period, 80-83. There we were, in my office, our bikes downstairs, listening to Slates, Slags, etc., and I was showing him books. Appelfeld! Josipovici! Bernhard! I tell him he must read Roubaud: you’ll love this. And I tell him of the Bela Tarr interviews W. sent me to earlier on. Incredible! W. had said. Bela Tarr is our leader. How long we’ve been waiting for a leader! But Bela Tarr is our leader. Earlier in the day, W. and I sent one another excerpts from Bela Tarr interviews. Extraordinary! We have a leader! We should have become film directors, said W. That’s where it all went wrong, trying to become philosophers rather than film directors.

What’s your latest escape plan? asked W., earlier. What’s your latest line of flight? he said. What’s your new plan? I tell him, the plans are entirely for his benefit, that he is the spectator of my plans to escape. – I remember your Hindu turn, said W. And your musical one. What is it now? No more philosophy, I tell him. Oh yes, and when did you start doing philosophy?, says W. I think it would be nice to write a comic novel, I say. Like Tom Sharpe?

There are two problems, said W., the word ‘comic’ and the word ‘novel’. You’re not funny and you can’t write. Then he says: a comic novel – why because people laugh at you? Here he comes, the buffoon, bells on his cap. Here he comes, jingle jangle, let’s all laugh at him. Meanwhile, there’s Bela Tarr. He’s a genius, says W. He says he only makes films about ugly, poor people. The ugly and the poor are always with us, that’s what he says, says W. You’re a bit poor and I’m a bit ugly, says W. You’re poor and I’m ugly.

He’s like Tarkovsky without God, said W., only slower. He says Tarkovsky made bad films when he left Russia, said W. But what about Nostalghia? I say. No, that’s your failing, said W. Nostalghia‘s no good, said W. It’s great, I said. Bela Tarr’s great, says W. Then W. goes online and buys some DVDs by Bela Tarr. I’ll send them to you, W. said. Maybe we should make films, said W., oh but you’re writing a comic novel, he said. I like that idea, a comic novel, I said. There’s two problems: you’re not funny and you can’t write. And you never finish anything. When did you last finish anything?

W.’s book has come out. The editor went down to dine with W. He sent W. 20 copies of his own book. The editor proofread the manuscript several times and sent it out for proofreading. It looks great, said W., and it’s in paperback. I don’t want to be in paperback, I tell him. God, that’s the last thing I want. My book looks great, said W., except for the ancient Greek, that looks terrible. The Hebrew is okay, but the ancient Greek looks like a child drew it. It’s hilarious. But the cover’s terrible, I say. He agrees.

Have you seen the cover of my new one?, I say. He hasn’t seen it. Green splodges, I say, now that’s hilarious. Quite a nice font, though, don’t you think? The font’s shit and your book’s shit, says W. Later, W. tries to convince me he’s clever. He sends me his notes on Spinoza. See, I’m clever, says W. I read them. Yes, pretty clever. What are you going to do with them?, I ask him of his notes. Nothing, says W. I’m not like you. I don’t try and publish everything I write. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine writing something you didn’t publish? Can you?

Bela Tarr, now he’s serious, says W. You know what he said: ‘We have some ontological problems and now I think a whole pile of shit is coming from the cosmos’. Cosmic shit. The interviewers ask him what this shit is that’s coming from the cosmos, and he says, ‘I just think about the quality of human life and when I say "shit" I think I’m very close to it’. That’s genius, says W.

W.: So what are you reading? Nothing, I tell him. I’m going out a lot. What happened to you? says W. It’s either everything or nothing, isn’t it? Then he says his publisher want to publish me. What are you going to write on?, says W. We think of a few ideas. You ought to do something, says W. Oh yes, you’re writing your comic novel, aren’t you. What’s it about? I don’t know, I say. What happens in it? What funny things are you going to relate? Then: you know what your problem is … – What? – You’re shit. – No you’re shit. – We’re cosmic shit, the shit’s hit the fan, it’s all over. Then W. says, ahh, and I say ahh, life! What happened? When did it all go wrong? We should have been film directors, shouldn’t we? Bela Tarr, he’s our leader. We are agreed on that.

He only makes films with friends, says W. And he hates cinematographers. He went through seven of them when he made Satantango. He says they complicate things. Like Mark E. Smith on musicians, I say. Bela Tarr wanted to be a philosopher, says W., but when he started making films, he stopped wanting to be a philosopher. And he doesn’t believe in God, says W. Bela Tarr’s seen too much to believe in God. He takes years over each film, says W. Years. And they’re full of drunk people. Full of drunk, aggressive people. Like you, says W. Drunk and aggressive like you, says W. And mud. His films are full of mud. That’s where you belong, in the mud, says W.

Bela Tarr is everything you’re not, says W. He’s serious, he’s committed, he works hard. What are you doing at the moment? What are you writing? Your comic novel? Oh you haven’t begun it yet, that’s a surprise. You don’t know what it’s going to be about, that’s a surprise. You shouldn’t think because people laugh at you that you can write a comic novel. You shouldn’t think because you are a buffoon that you can write anything funny.

So how fat are you now?, says W., you must be really fat. Are you eating now? What are you eating? I tell him I’ve been cycling around. Cycling, he says, that won’t help. Where did it all go wrong? It’s all going down, says W., the whole thing. The world’s ending, and we’re done for. I’m not like you, says W., the rat who leaves the sinking ship. You’re not escaping, says W. You’re going to drown like the rest of us. I’m going to make sure of it. You’re going down, says W.

It does no good to let a few days go unmarked, I tell myself, so I should write something, even if it is to say very little. September, and I have just seen the first Daddy Long Legs, creatures of the threshold, Handke would say, which makes me see them as little omens rather than little irritants. And a mosquito, too, hovering in the air. Storms tonight. I was stranded in the office by the rain, but I watched the lightning over the buildings in the distance. Magnificent!

Hard work, day by day. Most nights out, rare nights in, no longer light at eleven or ten o clock; eight-thirty sees the night. We spend our last evenings of the summer at the Free Trade, looking out over the river. We lived in the pubs of the Ouseburn valley this summer; soon everything will change, and we will say, ‘that was a great summer’, or ‘that was the summer when we went out every night’.

I’ve been editing the categories here at the blog in downtime. How much nonsense I’ve written! I’ve cut hundreds of posts, but left hundreds more – so short, almost charming and so unlike what I write now. I passed my hundred thousandth page view the other day – no doubt because of the Celebrity category, which was only the first part of an attempt to rewrite the Heideggerian fourfold, you know the one, earth, world, gods, mortals. I had it in mind to do my own ‘Feldweg‘, too, set in Bracknell of course, then Zarathustra in Slough.

Conferences coming up. Weeks of work on papers, written and rewritten and no doubt overwritten, ultra-dense and writerly rather than open and accessible. I tried to concentrate all I’ve written on the everyday and on literature into a 4,000 paper and to write without using proper names or quoting, according to our DOGMA rules (DOGMA should be written in capitals, says W., laughing). What were those rules (made up in imitation of the Danish film group, or as a version of OULIPO, writing under constraint, or was it reading Flusser that gave us the idea)?

All I can remember: 1) Only one proper name; 2) No quotations – no textual commentary; 3) It must be ridden with pathos; 4) You can’t tell anyone about DOGMA (which I’ve just broken, of course). And was there a rule about collaborating? About working with friends, writing together? Laughter – of course there are DOGMA conferences, too, and DOGMA careers, or anti-careers. This is a war on tweed …

M. says philosophy is like an unrequited love affair. That’s what K. said, anyway. Unrequited – you get nothing back; there’s only longing, inadequacy, a life unfulfilled. Plans for the next academic year … No – I won’t tell you them! Philosophy frayed, philosophy compromised, interdisciplinarised out of existence! Laughter again: how else can it survive? we ask. And reply: there’s nothing of it left, and besides, who are we to represent philosophy? The usual conversation with W., ‘have you ever had a single idea?’ – ‘No’.

But then I came across the new book by X. in the library. Oh, it was terrible. I had to go and look at the Josipovici novels to recover, I felt weak and nauseous. Later, I looked at W.’s review again, with his dream of philosophy being reborn in Britain. Germany to France, and France to Britain. I laughed. I said to K., ‘I keep going only because X. is so bad. Can you believe his book, I mean, can you? ‘More laughter. ‘I’ve no ideas, nothing to say, and not in a good way – not like Beckett’.

The proofs are spread around me, I said to W. I’ve marked them with little proof readers symbols, but it’s no good, I said. It’s mediocre, the book, and nothing can change that. It’s mediocre just as I am mediocre. Here I sit, I said to W., in tubby mediocrity. Look at me, I said, I’m aging fast.

What’s disappointing is that I’m not the worst, I said to W. I don’t even have that consolation. I can’t say to myself: I’m  the worst and still I sit here in my office, still I keep my job. No, there are others like me, hundreds of them, sitting in their offices. Hundreds of us, writing our mediocre books. Some of us do well, I said, and some of us do badly. What does it matter, the mediocrity is the same.

I have no real idea of I’m writing about, I said. I’m like a mole tunnelling through the darkness. But a mole without claws, going nowhere. There’s no progress, nothing changes. There’s a little pile of dirt behind me, a little mound. I take it as a sign that I’ve advanced. But the mound is a mound of papers and articles. Then, the horror: it is the mound of what I’ve written. That mediocre mound of bad prose and flimsy arguments.

W. is ranking philosophers. The problem with X and Y, he says, is all the bluster. They don’t actually say anything. It’s just bluster. And they pretend to be experts on things they know nothing about and that they can speak all these languages they can’t speak.  Then he says, But they still write better books than us. If our books didn’t exist it would actually add something to the world.

I tell him about the new piece I’m writing. It’s confidently written, I tell him, but I had to scrap it. I didn’t know why until W. used the word bluster. That is the word, I tell him, it was too blustery. I put it down to reading too many blustery books. All this taking of positions, I said, it’s all very well, but there’s no sign any of them have really read the philosophers they talk about. I don’t mind that, I said, so long as they say something themselves.

We are planning our Dogma papers. They have to be full of pathos, says W., that’s rule 12 of Dogma. He’s sent me the first part of his paper. It is full of pathos. I’m good at that, pathos, I tell him. Lefebvre’s so boring I tell him. I’m just going to make up stuff on the everyday, I said. That’s what I’m going to write on. Reading and the everyday.