I'll Be Pleased When I'm Dead. That

My Major Aim Was To Shape A Book Which Would Make Its Own Comment, A Wordless Statement: To Talk Through The Way It Was Shaped.

I Find Myself Increasingly Shocked At The Unthinking And Automatic Rubbishing Of Men Which Is Now So Part Of Our Culture That It Is Hardly Even Noticed.

The Novel Has Become A Function Of The Fragmented Society, The Fragmented Consciousness. Human Beings Are So Divided, Are Becoming More And More Divided, And More Subdivided In Themselves, Reflecting The World, That They Reach Out Desperately, Not Knowing They Do It, For Information About Other Groups Inside Their Own Country, Let Alone About Groups In Other Countries. It Is A Blind Grasping Out For Their Own Wholeness, And The Novel-report Is A Means Toward It.

What Society Doesn't Realize Is That In The Past, Ordinary People Respected Learning. They Respected Books, And They Don't Now, Or Not Very Much. That Whole Respect For Serious Literature And Learning Has Disappeared.

Intelligence Forbids Tears.