'...these
days everyone was writing a book, and there was no need to have the
disaster or the unique experience before you wrote the book; in fact
you could start with the film and then write the book and then have
the disaster or the unique experience.'
I
marked this passage in Janet Frame's Living
in the Maniototo (on
p.219) on the morning of St. George's Day 2018, the date also (though
I didn't know it then for the news was still a few hours from
breaking) of the birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's third
child, a son weighing in at 8lbs 7oz, fifth in line to the throne and
whom as far as I know at 18:15, present time, has been shown to the
public and has met his brother and sister but has not yet been
officially or royally named. I'm thinking it might be
Arthur...because one thing's for sure it won't be George. And there
is a novel called Arthur and George by Julian Barnes. I wonder if
they know of it? Maybe they'll settle instead on Alfred or Philip.
I'll tell you tomorrow, though of course by then, as in my time of
telling, that news will already be old, and will be older still by
time you read it where it will then be a well-known fact.
But
back to my earlier marking of that passage not with pencil but with a
yellow post-it immediately upon reading with a groan and thinking: So
so true, even though I was relating it to now and not to when it was
originally published in 1979, in the year before my own birth. No
change then; it's only got worse. Books written as therapy:
self-help, journals, memoirs, diaries, novels. Erm, what exactly am I
doing? Well, yes...and it is a sheepish yes, but can't I question the
authenticity of others' outpourings as well as this need to, well,
pour, and then engage readers to pour over and create some kind of
community? Could some of these be less private therapy made public
than guaranteed marketing strategies, proven to work and gain
exposure? Here's your fame and the shame, the pity parade and the
support network. The word out and minor celebrities (talk show and
radio hosts) endorsing your book and telling, or inviting you to
tell, your story to a bigger audience that may be watching or
listening.
Ooh,
aren't we cynical? I have a critical eye, which I make no apology for
(except on occasions to a part of myself that doubts its stern
judgements even as they're being passed) because it's rare that it's
verbalised; it prefers to have its observations recorded in black
type, in Times New Roman or Georgia. Yet even here I'm speaking half
in truth and half in jest.
Indeed,
writing can be therapeutic. But does a book need to come out of it?
An explanation. Of you. Of me. Of yours, or my family. Of a personal
crisis that has been gone through, or might be. This is who I am.
This is where I fit, or don't fit, in. This is where I've come from
and this is where I hope to go. And it might not always be in a
volume of words, it might be in far fewer characters, published
piecemeal, or in uploaded pictures to show this is where I am and
this is what I'm about to eat and oh, here's what I look like while I
do so.
Tomorrow.
My stomach still swollen from a salad and bread lunch at 1700 hours,
and I'm pondering if it will be ready at its customary hour (20:30)
to tackle dinner: a soy and ginger sauce defrosting in the fridge to
go with some due-to-expire tenderstem broccoli, in the same moment as
realising the name of the Queen's sixth grandchild hasn't yet been
proclaimed, and so I won't as promised be able to verify it, long
after the fact, here. A souvenir newspaper, a different essay,
another book will tell it and record it for posterity and be of the
time: witnessed, written and published then, and not announced, as
I'm doing here, in the following year as if it were new, although the
instant itself was lived through and written in.
How
is this therapy? It's a purging of all the random thoughts my head
contains, not that I think that you (or even I) benefit from it, not
in that journeying sense – it doesn't take me to somewhere, from
here to there. No, I'm still where I was like a mountain seen in the
distance on a hazy or clear day, or a cliff-face which with each
visit has eroded a little more, crumbled into the sea, on a par with
my ebbing interest in other people's explanations. My own don't
satisfy me, and yet, in this Age come round for a second, third or
fourth time, they must be set down.
Picture credit: Cliff at Dieppe, 1882, Claude Monet (Source: WikiArt)
All posts published this year were penned during the last.
