letter to Nicola
Scottie Bowman (bowman@mail.indigo.ie)
Mon, 02 Nov 1998 20:56:24 +0000
Dear Nicola,
This is no place for a girl like you. You must escape at once,
clutching your sanity & thanking God you were warned in time.
I wish someone had warned me. However, as you can see, it's
now too late. Here I am marooned - like a drunk in a Marseilles
brothel - in the midst of these weird Yanks endlessly projecting
their quasi religious fantasies onto a modest body of work by one
of their minor 1950s writers.
Your instincts are absolutely sound & healthy. Fiction is either
to be written or read. Anything else is - as you've rightly
recognised - simply word-wanking. On this basis, I'm sure
you should also give up your college English course. Remember
the just deceased Ted Hughes. He too became so disillusioned
with his teachers that he packed the whole lot in, took up
anthropology & went on write some of the greatest of all modern
English poetry.
Scottie B.