On Matters Literary.

I found Dostoevsky more to my taste tonight, whether through some subtle change in his style or some improvement in my own perception I couldn’t say. But what really pleased me was finishing off The Gift Horse.

Remember me saying that chapter 7 badly needed editing? It certainly does. Chapter 8 is better, but that needs a little work too. Chapter 9, however, is quite splendid, and the reason is simple enough. It was lifted almost completely from personal experience, the profoundly moving events of Christmas 2004 to be precise. All I did was convert my dear real dog Penny into my dear fictional friend Natalie, and the rest was easily and competently stated. The epilogue continues in like manner and the final sentence is just about perfect.

They do say, don’t they, that a literary work is like a musical one – get the beginning and ending right and it matters little if you stumble somewhere in the middle. But the little is important to a perfectionist, so all I have to do now is smooth out chapters 7 and 8 and the opus will be ready to take the world by storm.

I won’t bother, of course, because the opus really isn’t that good. And so the original will lie unheeded deep in the memory of a computer somewhere in one of the Carolinas and the world will never be acquainted with either The Gift Horse or its author. But I will, so that’s OK.