Remembering how Livia used to quiz me about it: my literaro-philosophical writing. My philosophico-literary writing.
She used to make me tell it to her again: how I worked on my philosophico-literary writing in my Hertfordshire University years. In my commuting between campuses of Hertfordshire years. The Aldenham campus. The St Albans campus. The Hatfield campus. As I commuted to and from Watford, where I had my bedsit. Where I scraped by on my part-time wage, on the Hertfordshire plain. On my paid-by-the-hour wage.
It might seem that there was an infinite distance between Watford and my literaro-philosophy project, Livia used to marvel. Between my total bus-dependency and my philosophico-literary dreams.
Listening to Penderecki on the extra-slow bus between the campuses of Hertfordshire University. Reading Mandelstam on the stopping-everywhere bus. Listening to Ligotti, on the requiring-infinite-patience bus. Reading Helene Cixous on the stuck-in-varoius-traffic-jams bus.
And working in a department actually hostile to European philosophy. That papered its walls with articles warning about the perils of European philosophy. Of the charlatanry of European philosophy! Claiming that Deleuze was a fraud! That Derrida was an impostor! Reviews of forensic accounts of Heidegger’s Nazism! Of Carl Schmitt’s Nazism! Of Paul de Man’s fascist past! Reviews of Intellectual Impostures. Of Fashionable Nonsense. All that kind of stuff.
My Hertfordshire years might seem entirely inimical to my philosophical ambitions, let alone my literaro-philosophical ones. And wasn’t I busy not just writing philosophy papers (my so-called philosophy papers), but with my literaro-philosophical musings? Wasn’t I at work not merely sending my academic papers out to academic journals (my so-called academic papers), but working frenziedly on my philosophico-literary writings?
Returning, after a day on the buses, to my Watford bedsit! Opening up my notebook in my Watford bedsit! Sipping my coffee and preparing to write, in my Watford bedsit! But wasn’t that the perfect place to write about my philosophical failure?, Livia said. Wasn’t it the perfect situation to bring together my philosophical incapableness with my literary incapableness. With the latter feeding the former. And the former feeding the latter. In perfect philosophico-literary feedback!
What genius: to write of my failure in the midst of failure. To write, in literary failure, of my philosophical failure. What ambition, which was disguised as anti-ambition.
There I was, reading Hélène Cixous in Watford, Livia said. Hidden from my colleagues, and the contempt of my colleagues! There I was, reading Maurice Blanchot. And Georges Bataille! An Marguerite Duras! And Clarice Lispector!
There I was, reading books that flaunted their philosophico-literariness, their literaro-philosophicalness, practically under cover! All but in enemy territory!
And dreaming of that my work might be the last literary gasp, the last philosophical gasp of that great European tradition. That it was all to end with me – to fall with me, in the farce of my literaro-philosophical writing.
I was on the verge of some great literary or non-literary breakthrough: that’s what I believed, wasn’t it? This was my equivalent of Beckett’s walk on the pier. Of Blanchot being put up against the wall to be shot. Of Cixous seeing that squirrel in Manhattan! I was the writer of the farce – of the farce that writing, and especially European style literaro-philosophy had become!
Work in Progress 