I feel that in most writing, but especially dramatic writing, fantasy, particularly psychological fantasy, must be framed with very realistic detail: otherwise it does not quite come alive—poetry cannot be all poetry, it needs the contrast of mundane matter.
The wind is shifting and there is wisdom in waiting for the right opportunity.
I beg you to tear up this letter at once. No document that gives access to Canetti’s inmost being must be allowed to survive.
Since the war I cannot find any point, see any future, love my fellow men; I have gone quite sour—and it is not possible, in that condition, to be a novelist, for he does deal in human beings.
I regard Mr. Thackeray as the first of Modern Masters, as the legitimate High Priest of Truth; I study him accordingly with reverence: he—I see—keeps the mermaid’s tail below water, and only hints at the dead men’s bones and noxious slime amidst which it wriggles.
So we have reached other continents, and await the next planets. CONGO FOR THE CONGOLESE! UNESCO FOR THE SITUATIONISTS!
Have something over 40,000 words done. Have worked well 6 days of every week since got here. Have 6 more cases of beer good for 6 more chapters.
I never had much ability for nor faith nor belief in realism. It is just a form of fantasy as nearly as I could figure.
Indeed I should like to give up the matter at once—I should like to die. I am sickened at the brute world which you are smiling with.
Perhaps I would not have written this letter had I not a knife in my hand.
