In a sense this has been a timed test. The aim of the test has been to establish whether or not I could “be a writer” in some non-idiotic way, and the problem is — I haven’t failed.
I have tried to non-idiotically become a writer through reading, through writing, through walking, through looking, through studying, through doing nothing, –and I definitely haven’t succeeded either. To succeed would mean having “written something.” To “write something” would be — “to write something undeniable.” To “write something undeniable” means — from which ever angle I looked at it, I must be forced to admit it had “a quality.” (What was a quality?)
The aim for a person who hasn’t succeeded at an activity must be to really feel his failure so completely that desire for it is crushed, freeing that aspect of the personality up to other activity. I unfortunately seem always to be fending off with the other hand that desperately needed disaster. This moaning about having failed, or having failed to fail, is perhaps part of it — even now I am trying — and failing– and even now I shall try again. (Getting close here to Beckett’s famous remarks.)
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 