pumpkinstrokemarrow

Now finished reading this one - not too sure if I had ever read it before. That being as that as it may, an interesting book, despite being in a form I usually dislike. That is to say as a series of generally short episodes jumping backwards and forwards in time. Something I almost invariably dislike in films.

But having got to the end, started to become curious about the authorial process. Simenon claims that when he wrote Maigrets, he would write down some notes about people and places - most of which would not figure in the product - and then launch himself off. Would lose himself in the stream of writing without knowing how it was all going to end until he got there. A process which sounds not unlike of that of telling children stories which one makes up on the hoof. Once one is in the stream it just flows on a good day. On a bad day one keeps snagging logs and sandbanks and coming to a dead stop. But I do not think that Eyeless in Gaza (small prize for anyone who knows without looking where the quote came from - I certainly did not) was written like that. So I have decided to go for literary geek and do a bit of textual analysis - resulting in the unfinished Excel of the previous post. If I ever get around to logging all fifty or so chapters maybe I will better understand what is going on.

Amongst other things, Huxley, whom I imagine to have been a life-long atheist, was very concerned about how hard it is to be truly good. About how much time and energy is just wasted or, worse, wasted on being bad. Perhaps he was setting too high a standard for himself. And perhaps looking for another path was why he had so much time for DHL - despite DHL's ranting and raving - and even unto death, with Huxley and his wife being two of the few people around him at the time.