One will Do

When greeting my closest friend one of my first questions is invariably what are you reading at the moment? Indeed this strikes me as far better means of introduction than the more asinine and much ruder what do you do? Currently I am reading Gore Vidal’s memoir Palimpsest. A memoir if is any good ought to leave you feeling a little envious, a wish that you too could have met those people, been in that situation. With Gore however he has been successful in all that he has done, met everyone and been in every imaginably desirable situation, so that you are moved beyond envy into a state of credulous incredulity as he skips lightly from sitting by the pool with Princess Margaret to seducing Jack Kerouac. You know that he has done these things since it is a matter of record but are still left wondering at it all. It is also an immensely funny book, I have not laughed aloud so much since reading Scoop, and yes he knew Waugh, disliked him personally though enjoyed his writing. His description of Charlton Heston, ‘chuck,’ unwittingly playing the enraged Gay lover in Ben Hur is hilarious.
Sadly, from my own perspective and given my opening question he also reflects on the reality that more and more people are writing, chasing fewer and fewer readers. I was recently asked why I had written a novel, was this to be famous! Actually a more pertinent question would have been why I wrote it and then made virtually no effort to get it published, real material for the psychotherapists couch. But as for fame, certainly as it is conceived now in its X Factor incarnation, I have never had the slightest interest, indeed the concept feels repellent. No I wanted to be ‘known’ by the truly literate, primarily people whom I liked and admired, an altogether different proposition. Still even that I, unlike Gore, look destined to remain unpublished I continue to write, I can, to coin a phrase, do no other. I have behind me a successful, even distinguished, career in social care and have done a number of other things in my life, some of them competently, but all seemed like a diversion from my true vocation, to write. This kind of thing is like a disease, it is in the blood which continues to pump regardless of the scale of readership, one will do.


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