May 20, 2006
Dear friend, dear Finn (I hope that I might now call you a friend) I was so pleased to have recognised your encoded missive and finally to have had feedback that the fact that I had not - obviously - made myself clear troubled me only a little. I have troubled myself more about it since then however. It is a matter of concern to me. I also now realise that some of my references may be foreign to you - foreign in its original unvarnished sense. I do not know whether you have read, in translation or in the original, any of the author or works from which I drew my original hypothesis. If not then please forgive for burdening you with such inapposite and irrelevant material. I seldom recall to myself when thinking or talking to you that your native tongue is not, of course, my own. In fact I am more aware of lingual divergence when thinking or talking to friends from the US than I am with you.
Having said all that I shall now attempt to explain myself properly.
In English we have a saying that "life imitates art" (source OFO'FWW - genius and sodomite - 1854-1900). This is a shortened form of the original ("Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life") but the kernel of meaning is right. And it is true you know. Only it is not an imitation. It is a seepage, no not a seepage, an active intervention in fact. It is what Flann O'Brien knew and hinted at in "At Swim Two Birds" and that he elaborated in more sinister fashion in the "Third Policeman" - or was it De Selby who knew it and he who used Flann as his mouthpiece? No matter for now. Great writers are ultimately solipsists creating the universes that they inhabit by their will and intellect. Not as lesser mortals suspect in some fictive fashion but in the physical world. Their creative urge pushes out beyond the page and into the outside world. Flann, or De Selby, sensed that this was so and even had some inkling of how it might work. But in those days quantum mechanics was young and barely comprehended - it should therefore come as no surprise that their hypothesis was pitched at the molecular level. In "The Third Policeman" it is explained how constant contact between the saddle of the bicycle and the policeman has irreversibly exchanged molecules of seat and policeman so that the policeman is now part bicycle and the bicycle part policeman. We know now that this is nonsensical: this interchange takes place at the quantum level - it is quarks and leptons that swap sides in their charmed and strange dance of spin and flavour. And if this is true for weak forces like bicycles and policemen how could it be denied that for strong forces like creativity and life itself it must also be true. This then is why life imitates (or appears to imitate) art. Art is a strong force and its quantum components cannot possibly be contained indefinitely. Life, at bottom is made - at least partly - by art. But at what cost we wonder? And what becomes of the quarks of life that end up in the work of art? You see my problem immediately - if this Laz character is good (and trust me he is) then his creation of me is in some way pushing its way into me and my life (hence the youthful spring in my step on the mornings after his literary excursions include me) then in what way will its impact be permanent? What would happen if he decided to kill me off? And finally, what part of my life of me is being left over there in his fictive me - can I do without it?
There is one more thing that I want to discuss with you if you will indulge me: last night I went to his study while he was writing me (I have explained how that works somewhere haven't I?) in order specifically to inspect his typewriter. I had been entranced by this device since first I saw it on the huge partners desk beside the four shoe boxes. It was immediately both familiar and magical. For days I have wondered about it - aloud and in secret musings. It was only yesterday that it hit me - it is my old typewriter - the one I wrote my earliest works on: when publisher's advances would not stretch to computers. I bought it when at college from a small pawnshop in Trellis Street around the corner from my then digs (although I cannot for the life of me recall having ever parted myself from it) and it was a trusty friend all through the drafts and fair copies of those faltering first works. It seemed to me sometimes in those dark dry blocked days that it even helped me out sometimes; drawing my fingers pecking towards particular clusters of letters that would then assemble themselves into a well turned phrase. As now, I had no real muse in the very concrete supernatural way that Johnson did, and my own little conceit was that this typewriter had once been owned by a great writer and had learnt its own writing skills that it could teach me. Would teach if I would only learn from it. The countless hours I spent at that machine!
Anyway, to get back to last night. I went to his study to check. My own typewriter had a unique defect, as I am told do all typewriters. The lower case X (x) had not been cast correctly and the ink from the ribbon would always smudge around the cruciform leaving a tell-tale thickening in the middle of the letter-form. I had to check for myself whether his typewriter had the same malformation (another time I shall tell you how I managed to make sure that he would have to type an x); whether his typewriter was my typewriter. It is.
Feeling emboldened by my discovery I dared more last night than ever before. When the Laz left the room to make coffee I peeked into one of the shoe boxes and bizarrely I discovered there a potted history of that very typewriter. Supported by a private investigator's invoice and various supporting documentation it proves he has traced the full history of my typewriter!
Finn my friend, for now I really think of you as a friend, I have unburdened enough for one day, these nocturnal wanderings tire me - I shall conclude this epistle tomorrow but rather than wait I shall send this first part winging its way to you and hope against hope that it is sufficiently coherent to warrant your attention.
For now I remain
your exhausted friend
GilbertS
(to be continued ... )