Progress

I’m relieved to say that I’ve completed the sixth draft of my Introduction to George Calderon: Edwardian Genius since June 2013 and cannot at the moment do more. It’s gone off to my biographer colleague for his attention. After he has put it through his mangle, I hope to iron it to a state of crispness and that will be that.

As I explained in my post of 19 May, I have recast the Introduction in terms of what six independent readers told me they thought should be addressed in it. One really has to pitch these things to the potential reader. However, a surprising amount of this latest version survives from rabbitings that first saw the light three years ago.

I am hopeful that this long process has successfully concealed the fact that I am wholly unqualified to write introductions to my own work. You don’t, thankfully, have to explain your own poems or plays… It’s an impossible demand. I worked three years with Ireland’s greatest living dramatist, Tom Murphy, on his play The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant, and when it was all over he asked me to write its first publicity shot. ‘Tell me what it’s about, Patrick, because I don’t know any longer,’ he said. Quite.

So I am now going into printing out the ‘revised typescript’ on recycled paper and giving it its final hoover (how unthreatening these domestic, feminine images are!). Goodness knows how many weeks it will take. Some people have told me that they regard this as the most satisfying stage of writing a book, but I don’t. I can’t possibly face 165,000 words in a mood of enjoyment and self-congratulation. If one doesn’t read hypercritically, it’s a waste of time. The real question is, how much will I want to tamper with?

For the archive of posts since 31 July 2015, please click here.