AUTUMN LETTER

Have recently joined a writing group at The City Lit in Holborn, consequently I am writing a lot of fiction at the moment, this never feels like a wholly grown up activity and also has the particular side effect of making one look at every event from the angle of its fictional potential. So as it grows steadily colder outside I watch incredible scenes on the TV of lower Manhattan now under several feet of water. I am trying to write about New York, though was already trying to compose a piece on the city before recent events.. At the same time I am also reading Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, partly set in New york City.

I made several visits to New York, both the state and city, in the mid 1990’s and also spent some time studying at Rutgers University in New Jersey, which  allowed me to visit the city that never sleeps on numerous occassions. I became very fond of New York City, which, for all its existential energy, can be one of the most welcoming of cities;[1] seeing the city wounded on 9/11 had all the pathos of watching a gentle giant being blinded.

Franzen’s writing has rightly been compared to Roth and Updike, there is wonderful wit in his writing that penetrates the absurdity of so much American life and exposes the sinister nature of rampant American style capitalism. I am already looking forward to reading his more recent book Freedom.

I have been walking as much as possible at the moment, as I both need the exercise and the cost of travel in central London is now exorbitant; a return journey to any central London station costing me £4 that is $6.40 or 202 Russian Roubles. Diets are by common consent useless, though I do not see the alternative. I am now resigned to a cycle of loosing weight, putting some back on again, and then loosing it. Autumn along with spring is the best time for walking, particularly on days brushed by winter sunshine. London being a city particularly suited to winter walks, with some of the finest inner city green spaces anywhere in the world.

The whole sordid and dingy Saville affair drags on, like shabby soiled sheets from the sixties, seventies and eighties paraded through television studios, which have led to the kind of hysteria not seen since the Salem witch trials.

The extraordinary thing about Saville is that his behaviour was so incredibly, to use the slang expression, in your face. At the time I felt that Saville was a bit creepy and it seems that his predilection for pubescent girls was something of an open secret amongst many of his colleagues at the BBC.
One of the sillier aspects of the affair has been the assessment of Saville’s charity work; some people seem to believe that this can only be explained merely as a cover for his paedophile activities! These people need to wake up to the complexities of the human condition.[2] It is perfectly possible for someone to engage in working with the homeless, doling out soup and sympathy in the evenings being motivated by compassion and a sense of social responsibility, whilst harbouring violently homophobic fantasies and molesting little boys on the tube. Hitler was fond of children and animals, Hamas and Hezbollah cut their teeth by providing social services. Saville raised mountains of cash for good causes and was a predatory paedophile creep.

The allegations against Jimmy Saville emerged along with a catalogue of other allegations related to the culture of the BBC in the 1970’s and 80’s. At the same time a schoolmaster travelled to France with one of his 15yr old female pupils; whilst recently in the north of England a group of men were convicted of a sustained campaign  of sex acts, including rape, with underage girls. Obviously the above catalogue varies greatly in terms of seriousness, however once again it undoubtedly places the male libido in the dock. As Socrates observed, Living with the male libido is like being chained to a madman.'

Thankfully it is a minority of men who follow their sexual impulses, abandoning all morality in the process, to the degree that Saville or the paedophile[3] ring in Rochdale did.  Nor do I wish to suggest that men are all helpless slaves to the voracious demands of the libido. However many a politician or public figure has risked their whole career simply for the sake of a fuck.
In my own experience I have known people who have put happy and stable relationships at risk for the sake of a brief sex based fling, and on more than one occasion I have made a fool of my self chasing the prospect of ‘sexual congress.’ It is not usually till later in life that most men finally start to tame the demands of the mad man.

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[1] Though don’t try asking directions in Manhattan, when I once tried this I was shunned like someone passing out free packets of anthrax. 

 

[2] Similar incredulity has been expressed around Lance Armstrong’s charity work!

[3] Paedophilia is I suspect far more widespread than people are comfortable acknowledging. Predatory males seeking sexual gratification amongst the most vulnerable and youngest members of the herd.
 

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