Spurious

An Idiot Boswell

Is this what your mighty oeuvre has shrunk too, says W., writing stupid posts about me? They're not even accurate, he says. You make me out to be too mean, too much of a nag. And you're too much of a whiner. I'm an idiot Boswell to an idiot Johnson, I tell him.

How's it come to this?, W. says. What wrong turn did he make? He was like Dante, he says, lost in a dark forest. And there I was, he says, the idiot in the forest. I was always lost, weren't you? I didn't even know I was lost, but I was lost. Or perhaps I was never lost. Perhaps I belonged in the forest, W muses. Perhaps I am I only that forest where W. is wandering, he says, he's not sure.

Whiny Noises

I'm dreaming of administration, I tell W. It's all I dream about, all I think about. It's permeated me completely. I'm made of administration. Of course, I'm very good at administration, I tell W. I'm perfectly fitted to it. It's frightening. Did I ever think I would become an administrator?, W. asks. Oh I knew I'd do anything! Anything! It's your desperation, says W., they can smell it on you. You're a desperate man, anyone can see that.

It's all to do with my periods of unemployment, W. says. I fear unemployment more than anything, he notes. In fact, don't I tell him constantly about my dreams of unemployment? I probably dream more about unemployment than about administration, W. decides. In the end, my dreams of administration are actually a kind of relief from my constant dreams of unemployment.

W. has no great fear of unemployment, he says. We both agree that I began from a lower position than he did. I expected much less. Survival was enough for me. A job - any job - that was halfway tolerable. You were made to be an administrator, W. says. You have the soul for it. The fear. It's what makes you a good administrator. My administrative proficiency frightens him, W. admits. It's a sign of complete desperation. In the end, it's what will always compromise my work, my reading and writing. You always have administration to fall back on, W. says. You never really experience your failure.

With neither a fear of unemployment nor a fearful skill as an administator, W. is alone with his failure, he says. It's terrible - there's no alibi, he can't blame it on anyone. Whose fault is it but his. W. laments his laziness, his indolence. He had every advantage and now - what has he accomplished? What has he done? I can have no understanding of his sense of failure, W. tells me. It's beyond my understanding. You're like the dog that licks the hand of his master. You'll be licking their hand even as they beat you and making little whiny noises. You're good at that, aren't you - making whiny noises.

Misanthropy

You would think that with my simplicity I would also have a simple love for humankind, says W., but that's not nearly the case. I'm full of hatred, aren't I? This as we walk around the cloister at W.'s place of work, colleagues warmly greeting W. and W. warmly greeting his colleagues.

I skulk around my place of work, W. observes, I'll do anything to avoid human contact. He remembers how I told him of the vastly circuitous routes I take through my building so as to not to say hello to anyone. I don't know why greetings are so difficult for you, says W. 

W. doesn't believe its misanthropy, just as he has never believed I am a melancholic. It's simply a kind of low level awkwardness, he says just as my melancholy is no more than a few bad moods.

More friendly greetings from his colleagues. W.'s place of work is a much happier place than mine, we observe, despite everything. It doesn't know despair. Everyone helps and supports one another, except for management, and everyone is against management.

That's not the case where you work, is it?, says W. There's no help and no support, only brooding hatred and resentment. It's no wonder I think I'm misanthropic, says W. He would be, under the circumstances. And it's no wonder I think I'm melancholic, I mean look at my life. Something has gone very badly wrong with me, that much is clear, says W.

Stammering and Stuttering

W. is impressed by my stammer. You stammer and stutter, says W., and you swallow half your words. What's wrong with you? Every time I see him, he says, it gets a little worse. The simplest words are beginning to defeat me, W. says. Maybe it's mini-strokes, W. speculates. That would account for it. You had one just there, didn't you? 

Perhaps, W. muses, my stammering and stuttering is a sign of shame. W. says he never really thought I was capable of it, shame, but perhaps it is there nonetheless. Something inside you knows you talk rubbish, W. says. Something knows the unending bilge that comes out of your mouth.

W. dreams of serious conversation. Not that it would have serious topics, you understand, he says - that it would be concerned for example with the great topics of the day. Speech itself would be serious, he says with great vehemence. That's what he's found with the real thinkers he's known. Everything they say is serious, they're incapable of being unserious.

Even I become serious when a real thinker is about., W.'s observed. We remember that afternoon in Greenwich when W. was lost in conversation with one such thinker. I was leaning in, trying to listen; I had a sense of the seriousness of the conversation, W. could see it, he was impressed, for once I wasn't going to ruin it by talking about blowholes or something.

Conversation!, exclaims W., that's what friendship's all about, I think even you have a sense of that. It's why you stammer, says W. it's why you swallow half of your words.

Overpraise

Overpraise is the key, W. says. We should only speak of each other to others in the loftiest terms, he's always been insistent on this. These are dark times, after all. No one's safe. Look what happened to him recently! These are the last days, W.says. No one could think otherwise. It's all shit, it's all going to shit. It always will have already been shit, I say, laughing, as I take a photo of him underneath a sign saying 'end times'.

Overpraise is all we have, says W., that and sticking together. We have to be a pact, a phalanx who are prepared to die for another. I'd die for you, says W., quite serious. What about me - would you die for me? That's what friendship demands, says W. Of course, I would never say I would die for him, says W. He knows me. I'm incapable of that kind of sincerity. Or love. I'm incapable of love, W.'s always been insistent on that.

In a moment, I would break the phalanx and be off somewhere else. I'd betray him in a moment, W. says. Whereas he's always been very careful to overpraise me to others, he says. You have to. There are enemies everywhere, he says. I have enemies and so does he. And then there's the whole system, says W., which creates enemies instead of friends and enemies of friends. Betrayal is his greatest fear, says W.

Clucky Pride

With other people about, W. is a surprisingly motherly presence. He's protective and nuturing, and proud of his charge. Does he think of me as his protege?, I ask W. Am I his ward, as Robin is to Batman? Sometimes, W. exhibits what can only be called a clucky pride. 

Does he see himself as my mother? W.'s not sure. He feels the need to nag me, he says. He is a nagger. Why don't you read?, he likes to ask with grat insistence. Why don't you write? Go on, write another book, make it a trilogy.

W. is learning Greek for his next book. It's on religion, he says. He was going to do a book on time, but he decided against that. Religion, he says, and for that he needs Greek. And maths. If he's going to write about Cohen and God, he'll have to understand the infinitesimal calculus. What's it all about?, W. wonders. He'd asked his dad to teach him several years ago, but it was no use. He bought a book called Numbers, but only got through the first chapter, What is a Number?

Greek! Mathematics! W.'s not like me, who will just dash off a book regardless. Still, he says, the second book wasn't bad. 'Wasn't bad', that's his phrase. Religion, though, that's what W.'s thinking about. What am I thinking about?, he asks me. Your clucky pride, I say.

An Imaginary Nun

What have you done today?, W. asks me. How do you actually spend your time? Weeks and months and years pass, but I seem to do nothing, W. says. What have you read? What have you written, and why haven't you sent me any of it?

Friends should send each other what they write, W. says. He sends me everything - everything, and I barely even read it. He doesn't know why he thanked me in the acknowledgements of his new book, he says. I tell him I was surprised to find myself thanked as part of a long list of friends and colleagues. Didn't I always acknowledge his help with very special thanks?

W. says I didn't even read the chapters he sent to him, he could tell, my remarks were too general. I did read them, I tell him, well nearly all of them. You didn't read chapter five, says W., with the dog. He was very proud of his pages on his dog, even though he doesn't own a dog. You should always include a dog in your books, says W.

It's a bit like his imaginary children in his previous book, W. says. Do you remember the passages on children? Even W. wept. He weeps now to think of them. He's very moved by his own imaginary examples, he says. He wants to work a nun into his next book, he says. An imaginary nun.

The Emergency Scheisse Bar

You've only been wearing it for a few months, and already it's disgusting, says W. of my leather jacket. Look at it, it's green. Who would wear a green leather jacket? I point out I bought it because he complained about my last jacket, my velvet one. It was shapeless and made you look obese, said W., whereas this one just makes you look cheap.

Until recently, W. always carried a suit with him on our foreign visits. He didn't want to insult our hosts. I never had any concern about insulting our hosts, W. says, going on about blowholes and wearing one of my disgusting jackets. I point out that his suit makes him look like Gary Glitter, which W. finds very amusing. Then, laughing, he remembers seeing my interview suit, with the tapered trousers. They were parachute pants, W. says, like M.C. Hammer's.

Recently, W. left his suit behind at a busstop, the whole thing, in its carry case. He was reading, he says. Cohen probably. Anyway, he's already got another one, as I should. Think of our foreign hosts! In truth, W. would rather not care what our foreign hosts think of us. It's a weakness of his, he says, though other people would regard it as a strength. Of course, W. knows I don't care what our foreign hosts think of us, that's very clear. Perhaps that's a kind of stength, though, says W., though other people would regard it as a weakness.

Doesn't it bother you that your jacket's turned green and you've stains down your trousers? You never take enough pairs of trousers with you, do you? Just one pair! Do you think it's enough? W. never thinks it's enough. You should take two pairs of trousers, plus your suit, he says. How many pairs of underpants should I take?, I ask him. One for each day, says W.,and one extra in case you soil yourself. You're prone to accidents, aren't you? He reminds me of the Emergency Scheisse Bar in Freiburg, as we called it. What you hadn't have found it?, W. asks. What then?

Gibt sie auf!

There is something entirely lacking in you, W. says, although he's not quite sure what it is. Something which, for all his shortcomings, W. nevertheless possesses. But what is it? Shame - is that the word?, W. muses. A sense of shame? Anyone else would have stopped doing what I do. All that writing on the web! It's incredible, for W., who would never do such a thing and can't comprehend anyone who would.

It's endless, he says, it just goes on and on. And the same thing over and over again, he says. There's something missing in you, isn't there? What do you suppose it is? Is it shame?, W.'s not sure. Perhaps it's a more fundamental monomania, a kind of overpowering obsessiveness. You don't stop, do you? On and on it goes. How can anyone be interested? Even you aren't interested, not really, are you?

Perhaps it's a kind of reflex, W. muses. Some kind of automatic behaviour, of the kind exhibited by those insects who continue to mate even when you cut their heads off. Because there's no intelligence to it, W. says, there's only a conditioned reflex, that's all. Why don't you stop? No, really, why don't you?

Don't you have anything better to do? Couldn't you occupy your time otherwise? I tell it takes up barely any time at all. But even that time, says W., couldn't you find something else to do? In the end, W. says, it's because I crave adoration, that's his theory, though even he doesn't find that very persuasive. You need to be loved, he says, he's always said that.

Then, still musing as we walk up the hill into the town centre, he reminds me of my great hopes for the internet. A new Athens, wasn't that it? A new Jena?, he asks, laughing, knowing I said nothing about Athens or Jena. Ah, what's it all about?, W wonders rhetorically. Why am I so deluded? Why won't I listen to sense?

There's a short Kafka story, W. reminds me where a man in a great hurry gets lost on the way to the station and asks a policeman the way. Gibt sie auf!, says the policeman, give it up! That's what you should do, says W.: give it up!

Play Acting

In Waterstones Plymouth, looking for something to read. The Spire, has W. read that? Golding? Oh yes, W.'s read it. He's read all of Golding. It was part of his great reading phase, W. says. He read everything, everything! Piles and piles of literature! That was in the evening, after reading and writing on philosophy. The day reading philosophy and writing philosophy and the evening reading literature, author after author. Those were his golden years, says W. He was in his heyday! He doesn't read anything now, says W. with great melancholy. Or very little. It happens in your late 30s, says W., you can't read as much anymore. You can't read and write for a whole day, and then read in the evening as well.

Of course other things get in the way, too. He hardly worked in those days. His job was virtually part-time. How things have changed? What time does W. have now for reading? Now and again, W. says, he goes to the tulip garden at Mount Edgcombe to read Kafka. Off he goes, a fifteen minute walk through Stonehouse up to the Naval Dockyards and then the ferry across the Tamar - a friendly river, says W., he always thinks of it as that. And then a short walk the other side to the tulip garden, where W. gets out his Kafka. Although he loves Kafka, loves him more than anyone and always did,. in some sense Kafka crushes him. How can a human being write anything this great?, he asks himself, and then thinks ruefully of his own work. Where did it all go wrong?, W says.

I've never gone through that, have I?, W. says. I've never really experienced failure. In fact I hardly regard myself as a failure at all, W. is sure of that. All that writing on the net, for example. would Kafka ever write on the net? Of course not. W. doubts I've ever really read Kafka. If I had, then doubtless I wouldn't be writing on the net. You want to be loved, says W., that's your weakness. The net is your delusion. If I had really known my own failure, I would know that. W. has been to the bottom, he says, but he doubts I have. In truth, I've never really known failure, despite everything I write, says W. It's all play-acting.

Once, W. too thought of himself as a writer, a literary writer. He filled notebook after notebook. It was in his early twenties. Everyone wants to be a literary writer in their early 20s, says W. Of course no one ever is. W. realised it pretty quickly. I knew I was no Kafka, says W. That's what you don't know yet - you don't know you're not Kafka. You don't have a sense of yourself as a failure, which is ironic because you are a failure.