As A Bookish Adolescent, I Sopped Up

Sometimes It Occurs To Me That The Job Of A Serious Cultural Critic Mostly Consists In Telling The Generality Of People That Their Opinions - On Films, On Books, On All Manner Of Widgets, Gadgets And Even The Latest Electronic Fidgets - Simply Aren't Up To Scratch.

As A Writer, I'm Not Convinced That We Are The Best Equipped To Understand How We Go About The Business Of Literary Production.

If We Bought Everything On The Internet, Our Eyes And Mouths And Nostrils Would Probably Begin To Film Over With A Tegument - One Initially Tissue-thin And Capable Of Being Removed Each Morning, But Which Gradually Thickened And Hardened Until We Were Imprisoned In Our Own Tiny Minds.

Don't Look Back Until You've Written An Entire Draft, Just Begin Each Day From The Last Sentence You Wrote The Preceeding Day. This Prevents Those Cringing Feelings, And Means That You Have A Substantial Body Of Work Before You Get Down To The Real Work Which Is All In . . . The Edit.

I'm English Enough To Feel Something Of A Gut-reaction To Modernism, To Continental Philosophising And Anything That Smacks Of A Refusal To Pay Attention To The Forensics: The Empirical Facts On The Ground.