Why I write

I write because the models offered to me in youth as instruments to understand the world appeared too geometrical. From my father, I learned that you had to win, but found winning an uphill struggle with a weed of a body in a town infested with the offspring of thugs. From the Oblate fathers, and the Christian brothers of Ireland and the Sisters of St Anne, I was informed that my state of spiritual perfection left much to desire, only to discover that they had a ponzi scheme of their own simmering. But, most importantly, as I left off with the visions of my original mentors, I began to surmise that the world, as it stood, was a marvellous, many-coloured universe filled with everything you could possibly desire and much more, if only you had the guts to say to yourself - I want that.

So, I threw away the prizes which my mentors taught me were the worthwhile ones - respect, reputation, career, everything! And I threw myself at the mercy of the world, and took my advice from the poets and the vagabonds and the losers festering at the bottom of life's rockpile. They all taught me the same thing - that you had to take the world as it is, that you had to figure it out, and you had to love it with all its imperfections. Everybody gets burned.

I write for the same reason as my masters - Cendrars, Philippe Djian, Rabelais and Henry Miller and Villon and Catallus and de Gourmont - to propose an alternative way of understanding the world.

The writing I offer satisfies nothing of the tenets of the creative writing schools, of the journalists, of the professionals - they despise what I write, and they sneer at the manner of its expression and the omissions of what their dogmas say are the only acceptable ways to express thought. Clearly, they are absolutely right in their assessment. I can never live up to their requirements. I am a pariah. I betray everything they stand for.

My writing is the writing of a pyromaniac. If you like standing close to the heat, you'll see the sparks flying in every direction.

Anything that doesn't suit me gets tossed out of my attic overlooking the North Sea onto the paths close by, and the Batavian winds carry the looseleaf sheets away and drop them into the canals of this polderized land.

I am writing to you, and I address my words to a memory of you and to something which you no longer are - as icons and figurines from my ancient past - I want you all to know that writing of the type I propose is the surest way to poverty and loneliness, but it takes you to the realms of your deepest dreams. I write with great affection as you all form part of the mosaic, and some of you are renegades of the earliest hours, when to be a renegade was an act of courage.

As for those of you who are confused by this missive, or by acts which are those of a crazed man - moving to China after Tianenmen, consorting with rogues and psychopaths and con-men, dropping a sparkling career at the drop of a hat and without a second thought, lay the blame for it at the doorstep of literature.

Scaling les Dentelles de Montmirail

This is les Dentelles de Montmirail. Seen from our own rock la roque alric, where Lovejoy and I had been staring at the rising peaks, moving into our seventh bottle of wine. Lovejoy had been falsely slagged by his wife in a national magazine, she blamed him for turning her into a dyke, so he and I mulled over that one while pouring Gigondas down our throats, and arguing which is the best of the four major "caminos" or paths to Santiago de la Compostella, from Puy, Vezelay, Arles, or Paris.


The Sarasins had a weak spot for the Dentelles whenever they were conducting raids into infidel territory. After you climb up the sheer chalky cliffs, your main challenge is not to fall off the top. It's like playing rooftop tennis in Dubai, make sure the soles of your shoes grip well.


I haven't seen Lovejoy since that al l nighter, but I heard his ex-wife did a major recant on a morning talk show somewhere around the time we were communing with the mistral gods, claimed she was a victim of a femme fatale who was secretly recruiting women for a terrorist sisterhood, then made a public plea for the return of her once maligned ex-spouse.


That morning, I climbed the Dentelles again, and stayed there for a week alone, pondering the route to Santiago. Only 48 hours previous, I'd been planning to leave after a year's prep. But, that Gigondas wine, it moves you to flush out the useless details, and to get on with things.

There were a few people on my list that I had to get around to outdoing, or out absurding, or outdrinking, or outwriting, and at the top of the class, was the chief clown himself, Franck Rabelais, of the Rabelais, rabble rousers chapter.

Franck was convinced he was the funniest man alive, and there were a whole lot of priests who agreed with him. They were dying to ask the man a few questions. Dr Franck had gone incommunicado, that was my aim, to be issuing missives from unknown locations.

If you plan on getting listed on the most elite short list of literature - the Index librorum prohibitorumon put out by the Vatican, best to log some life history so you know what you're talking about when you finally decide to compile your "horribles et espouvantables Faicts et Prouesses du très renomméde Pantagruel, roy des Dipsodes, fils du grant Gargantua"