Re: scottie's books

    '... sounds very salingerian ... you wouldn't want
    to emulate *him*!....'

    I agree. In trying to airbrush history, I sound just as
    pompously self-important as the old Cornishman himself.
    I can't help it, though. I'm just too embarrassed by the limp,
    derivative mediocrity of those early books, made all the more
    intense by the knowledge of what I can do - & have done -
    since.

    When I write about the futility of 99% of all literary effort
    it's my own stuff I have in mind. The unbelievable reviews
    I got then from all the best people mean as little now as
    their equivalents still appearing each Sunday in the Literary
    pages - the books themselves a mere waste of shelf space
    & doomed to be forgotten by the end of the year.

    I'd find it just as hard to get stuff published now as any other
    tyro. All my 'discoverers' & cheer-leaders are now dead.
    And you know with what eagerness the circuit looks forward
    to selling a tongue-tied old-age pensioner with a tendency to gout.

    But that's OK. That doesn't matter. All that does matter is when
    you come back after a month or two to read what you've written
    - & find your heart turning over at what you'd momentarily forgotten
    you could do. That's the stuff will come out in the end all right.
    That's the stuff will still be going when the Times Lit Sup is yellowing
    on its own shelves.

    Like the Church of Rome - but to which, thank the Lord, I have
    never belonged - I operate sub specie aetertinatis.

    It's the only way.

    Scottie B.

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Received on Tue Apr 15 03:41:07 2003