What was I going to write?, Cicero wondered. And I made the mistake of telling her. The Work, she said. The Work. I Was to write The Work and then kill myself., I said, thereby completing The Work. Thereby leaving only those pages called The Work.
A wild manuscript. Which my friends – what friends? – would publish.
And what would it look like, The Work?, Cicero wondered. Like Lautréamont, I said. The Chants of Maldoror. How had Lautréamont reached me in the suburbs? she wondered. How did Lautréamont strike the suburban mind: not just the fact of Lautréamont, but actually reading his pages.
And what was I going to write about?, Cicero mused. What would happen in my fiction? Prose poetry, I told her. Of course! What else! It wasn’t going to be about anything. It was going to be the thing.
It would be mantic prose, I told Cicero. Hermetic prose. Vatic prose. Half mad. Fevered. Like Artaud’s Nerve Scales. Artaud – imagine, Cicero said. How did Artaud find me in the suburbs? How did Artaud sniff me out in the suburbs? How did Artaud’s oeuvre know that I needed it?
What could it mean to me, this European literature? Ungaretti, all the rest? What could I do with it, this enigmatic meteorite? That had fallen practically from nowhere.
Those ancient Penguin Modern European Poetry volumes, on my bookshelf. Ancient paperbacks! Written under impossible circumstances. Under fascism! Under communism! Under juntas! Under suicidalism! Samizdat volumes. Volumes smuggled out. Poems memorised, to be transcribed later. Countries where literature was resistance – imagine that! Where it mattered!
Not knowing any of the languages of Europe. But feeling them. Not having travelled in Europe – not even interrailing. But knowing it.
An entirely imaginary relationship to the works of old Europe. Of a provincial! From the suburbs!
Did I still nurture philosophical hopes, in my Hatfield years? What had Hatfield got to do with Antonin Artaud? What’s the distance between Lautréamont and Hatfield? An infinite distance. An uncrossable distance.
As I travelled between campuses, for the University of Hertfordshire. As I went from the Hatfield campus to the Aldenham campus. By bus! Always by bus!
Was I still dreaming of my philosophico-literary work whilst living in Hatfield? Cicero wondered. Whilst renting a bedsit in Hatfield? Did I read my Lautréamont and Artaud as I travelled between the campuses of Hertfordshire University? Did I dream my literary-philosophical dreams? Did Hatfield permit that? Did Aldenham?
The Hatfield distance, Cicero mused. The Hatfield marooning. Earning – how much was it – eight thousand pounds a year. To be skint in Hatfield! Penniless in Hatfield! Teaching in Hatfield! And in Aldenham! Commuting between campuses, as I dreamed my philosophico-literary dreams.
The infinite distance between Hatfield and literature, Cicero mused. The anti-Hatfielder, that’s who I was.
Commuting between campuses. The Aldenham campus. The Hatfield campus. Going through St Albans. And sometimes a trip to Watford. To Watford! Of all places! Nearly as bad as Hatfield! Perhaps even worse than Hatfield!
The infinite tension between Hatfield and literature, Cicero mused. Between Hatfield and philosophy!
And carless!, Cicero mused. Bus dependent! Taking hours to get anywhere! Reading my Penguin Modern European Poets volumes on the bus. Reading Quasimodo on the bus. Reading Seferis on the bus. In a traffic queue in St Albans.
Listening to Penderecki on the bus. Whilst reading Mandelstam. Listening to Ligoti, on the bus. Whilst reading Tsvetayeva.
And all the while teaching in a department actually hostile to European philosophy. That set itself against European philosophy. That was infinitely suspicious of European philosophy. That thought European philosophy was dangerous. European ideas! European philosophy!
There I was, part timer. Desperate in Hatfield. Lecturing suburban youth, in Hatfield. In Aldenham. There I was, travelling from campus to campus. On the bus!
Through the suburbs. Through St Albans! On achingly slow buses. On stopping everywhere buses. Taking-it-all-in-buses. Requiring-infinite-patience buses.
And the one time I got a lift from a colleague from campus to campus. The one time I was spotted at the bus stop and picked up, it was by a colleague who wanted to berate me about European philosophy. Who wanted to trap me in their car to complain about European philosophy. To say how much he hated European philosophy. Who wanted to blame me, basically, for European philosophy. And to take it on me: his hatred of European philosophy.
Did I put up a good fight for European philosophy? Did I make a convincing stand for European philosophy? Did I set a good example for European philosophy? Because I was a virtual ambassador for European philosophy in a department entirely hostile to European philosophy.
My Hatfield years! Which doubtless drove my literaro-philosophical dreams to the greatest tension.
There I was, reading Mandelstam and Tsvetayeva, waiting at the bus stop. There I was reading Maurice Blanchot, for God’s sake. On the bus through Hertfordshire. From campus to campus. Winding between the scattered campuses of Hertfordshire. Not so far from London. But a million miles from London.
The suburbs! The murder of the suburbs! The anti-intellectualism of the suburbs. The anti-Europeanism of the suburbs. Bushey, where George Michael grew up. Where Andrew Ridgely grew up. Watford, Where Elton John grew up. Hatfield, where Colin Blunstone grew up.
They escaped these places! They got out. George Michael and Andrew Ridgely, listening to Joy Division and dreaming of escape! Elton John, listening to Russel, and dreaming of getting out! Colin Blunstone, forming the Zombies, and dreaming of anywhere but Hatfield!
Why did they put university campuses in these places. Why did they drop them into these places. Was it a civilising mission? Was it a higher education mission?
Still nursing literaro-philosophical dreams! That anyone else would have grown out of! That anyone sensible would have left behind!
My culture heroes. The sacred books on my bookshelves. No one should be rereading Nerve scales at thirty. No one should be deciphering Hölderlin’s later elegies as they pass into their fourth decade. No one should be busy with Philippe Jacottet and Jacques Dupin on a suburban bus. And Hélène Cixous, for God’s sake! Hélène Cixous in Hertfordshire! Didn’t Hélène Cixous just rub in the fact that I was in lost in Hertfordshire! Teaching in Hertfordshire!
My Hertfordshire years, Cicero mused. Not just writing philosophy papers – and I was writing philosophy papers – but busy with literary-philosophical manuscripts.
There they were, in notebooks. Handwritten! Then transcribed into Word documents. Stored on my laptop.
Those writings. Written quickly. Edited slowly. Edited down to nearly nothing. All to do with The Work, somehow. All obsessed with two words: apocalypse and idiocy. Always those two words: apocalypse and idiocy. The idiot-apocalyptic: that’s what I was writing. The apocalyptico-idiotic.
Cicero liked to hear about them: my literary delusions. Cicero listened intently. Cicero all but took notes. This was high entertainment, for Cicero. She’d goad me on. Ask me more.
And then? she said. And then?
She’d be eager to hear more. It confirmed something from her. She’d nod her head. Yes, she’d say. Yes. My life … the patheticness of my life seemed to confirm something, for Cicero. How delighted she was to have drawn me to Newcastle, she said.
I was perfect for it, Newcastle. It was clearly my destiny, to come to Newcastle. It was perfection, she said. She chose the right person, she said. My delusions. My determination. My not accepting reality. What would have happened to me, if I hadn’t made it to Newcastle? Which is why it was all the more important that I had arrived in Newcastle.
My philosophical papers, and my literaro-philosophical musings. My notebook-filling. My transcriptsions.
What was I hoping for? What kind of work would it be? Who would publish it? Review it? Who would it be for? Who would it reach?
Didn’t I understand that my time had passed. The time for my kind. For literary enthusiasts. There were still movie enthusiasts, not so long ago. But literary enthusiasts? Decades ago, perhaps.
Was a part of any literary group? Did I know any other would-be writers? Did I review books anywhere? Of course not. Had I submitted anything to be published? Had I sent anything off to anyone? No, no. What was I waiting for? Who did I think I was going to be? Was England really read for its own Edmund Jabès?
Did I imagine some literary coterie receiving me. Welcoming me. As one of their own. Did I think I’d shine in some salon somewhere? That I’d be taken up by a literary in-crowd? That I’d find my place, somewhere else. I didn’t even think that.
What did I think lay ahead for me? Madness – literary madness? Literary ruin? Literary penury?
What a way to spend a life? Hunched over a table. Trying to do something I was singularly ill-equipped for. That I couldn’t do. That lay beyond me. That no one I knew was interested in.
Literature! With everything that was happening around us! Literature – literary dreams! A hundred years too late!
And having published nothing. Having finished nothing. Did I imagine myself like Fernando Pessoa, with his chest of manuscripts? Did I think I would be discovered after my death? Except that I had barely any manuscripts. A few phrases, that’s all. Hardly whole books. A few ill written phrases. Communicating what? About what?
A few lines jotted down on the bus.
And no allies out there. No friends! I hadn’t met the others yet. There was no one to talk to. I was sinking – just sinking. Writing my philosophical papers, yes. Trying to get published. But with my literaro-philosophical dreams as my true focus. Only my philosophico-literary desires. Only my litetaro-philosophical determination.
Did I write about the part-time condition?, Cicero wondered. Did I write about the futility of writing? The fact that you had no audience? Did I write about my humiliations?
But that was too close to me. It was happening all around me. Did I write about my academic misadventures? About the impossibility of finding a full-time job? None of that. I wanted to write about something else. Anything else.
How could I have faced it then: the disaster of my life? How could I have written of it, confronted it? How could I have worked my way through it?
No wonder I just put it to one side. No surprise that I wanted to write about anything else.
Literature was somewhere else. Literature floated free of all these things. Literature was innocent. Literature was second innocence – a draft of innocence.
Everything could be lifted by literature. Lifted into what? Into Literature, capital L. Into the most beautiful thing. Into the farthest-away thing. Into the literary sky itself. The sky far above Hatfield.
Reading Hélène Cixous in Hatfield. Buying the new translations no one else bought. Reading Clarice Lispector, like a last gasp of literary literature. Reading Krasznahorkai. Books that flaunted their literariness, which is to say their uselessness, their out of timelessness. Their belatedness.
A hyperliterary last flourish. And read the encomiums on the back. Dreaming literary dreams for us. Doing the literary thing as though the literary thing could still be done.
The last literary thing. In the dying embers. And did you think you could be the last of the last of the last. A Cixous beyond Cixous. A Lispector beyond Lispector.
And dreaming of death. Dreaming of The Work, and leaving it behind. As a mystery that would never be resolved. And that no one would even be interested in – not really. Dreaming of an oblivion far greater than the Comte de Lautrèament ever knew.
The pain of suburbanism, Cicero mused. The pain of Englishness. My pain. Chasing after what was not for me.
And ye perhaps I would find a way of writing that was true to my suburbanism, Cicero said. Perhaps it was a matter of writing the distance between the realities of my life and what Literature was.
An English distance, perhaps. Write that! Live that!
A post literary literature – that’s what I should write, Cicero said. A literature without literature. That marks the place where literature should be. That is full of the great names, and the distance of the great names. That takes place, all of it, between you and Literature, capital L.
Work in Progress 