and now when they look behind them, trying to remember what ordinary life used to be like, it’s so far away they have to squint. If novelists wrote honestly about their own lives, no one would read novels – and quite rightly! Maybe then we would finally have to confront how wrong, how deeply philosophically wrong, the current system of literary production really is – how it takes writers away from normal life, shuts the door
behind them, and tells them again and again how special they are and how important their opinions must be. And they come home from their weekend in Berlin, after four newspaper interviews, three photoshoots, two sold-out events, three long leisurely dinners where everyone complained about bad reviews, and they open up the old MacBook to write a beautifully observed little novel about ‘real life’。 I don’t say this lightly: it makes me want to be sick.
The problem with the contemporary Euro-American novel is that it relies for its structural integrity on suppressing the lived realities of most human beings on earth. To confront the poverty and misery in which millions of people are forced to live, to put the fact of that poverty, that misery, side by side with the lives of the ‘main characters’ of a novel, would be deemed either tasteless or simply artistically unsuccessful. Who can care, in short, what happens to the novel’s protagonists, when it’s happening in the context of the increasingly fast, increasingly brutal exploitation of a majority of the human species? Do the protagonists break up or stay together? In this world, what does it matter? So the novel works by suppressing the truth of the world – packing it tightly down underneath the glittering surface of the text. And we can care once again, as we do in real life, whether people break up or stay together – if, and only if, we have successfully forgotten about all the things more important than that, i.e. everything.
My own work is, it goes without saying, the worst culprit in this regard. For this reason I don’t think I’ll ever write a novel again.
You were in a bad mood writing that last message and said some very morbid things about wanting to die for the revolution. I hope by the time you receive this reply you will be thinking more about wanting to live for the revolution, and what such a life
would look like. You say that few people care what happens to you, and I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that some of us care very, very much – e.g. myself, Simon, your mother. I also feel certain it’s better to be deeply loved （which you are） than widely liked （which you probably also are! but I won’t labour the point）。 I’m sorry for complaining so much about book publicity, which is something no sane person could ever care to hear about – and I’m sorry for telling you I was going to take an extended break from publicity and then flying to Rome to promote my book because I am cowardly and hate letting people down. （I would apologise that we didn’t get to see each other before my flight, but that actually wasn’t my fault – the publishers booked me a car to the airport.） You’re right that I make too much money and live irresponsibly. I know I must bore you, but only as much as I bore myself – and I also love you, and feel grateful to you, for everything.
Anyway, yes, please do come to see me after the wedding. Shall I invite Simon along as well? Together, the two of us can surely explain to him why it is wrong for him to date incredibly beautiful women who are younger than us. I’m not totally sure yet why it would be wrong, but between now and then I can definitely come up with something.
All my love, Alice.
11
The evening after she received this email, Eileen was walking through Temple Bar toward Dame Street. It was a fine bright Saturday evening in early May and the sunlight slanted golden across the faces of buildings. She was wearing a leather jacket over a printed cotton dress, and when she caught the eyes of men passing by, young men in fleece jackets and boots, middle-aged men in fitted shirts, she smiled vaguely and averted her gaze. By half past eight, she had reached a bus stop opposite the old Central Bank. Removing a stick of mint gum from her handbag, she unwrapped it and put it in her mouth. Traffic passed and the shadows on the street moved slowly eastward while she smoothed the foil wrapper out with her fingernail. When her phone started ringing, she slipped it out from her pocket to look at the screen. It was her mother calling. She answered, and after exchanging hellos, Eileen said: Listen, I’m actually in town waiting for a bus, can I call you later on?
Your father’s upset about this business with Deirdre Prendergast, said Mary.