Tim Parks - The Server

You published books because you didn’t have the courage to write them yourself .

L .

Writers write because they don’t have the courage to live. Everybody knows that .

L .

And you didn’t even have the courage to write .

L

The publishing company goes bankrupt and the publisher runs off with his tail between his legs. To get religion. Pathetic. Right when his family needs him most. His daughter needs him desperately .

L .

If you knew how much you’ve disappointed me .

L .

Why not stick naked babes on the covers, since you never think of anything else?

L .

You don’t even have the courage to sell the filth you’re always thinking .

L .

Turn Muslim and marry a child bride .

L .

You won’t even have to divorce me .

L .

The next Mrs H has her first period .

L .

The next Mrs H has her first driving lesson .

L .

The next Mrs H enjoys her first drink in the Crown .

L .

Sorry, I forgot, you’re Muslim now. No booze .

L .

Is everybody here plagued like this? Does everyone come here because their mind has become unbearable? A litany of self-accusation .

Plausible .

The reason you’re listening to a nerd like Dasgupta, of course, is because you need to. Because he is not half as much a nerd as you are .

Be humble at least. Even if his ego is absurd, his system may be helpful .

Idea: so as to suffer it no longer, summarize everything in one hundred words. Your life in a blurb. THEN FORGET IT FOR EVER .

Exorcize your life in a blurb and spare yourself the book .

It’s weird. Sometimes this guy sounds like Jonathan, mostly when he’s being witty, sarky. But when he’s really unhappy he sounds like me.

Question: If there is no self, why do we fall in love with one person rather than another, and why always the wrong person?

Stop reading, Beth, get out of this bed and go to Mi Nu. Now. Ask her: how can I become like you, Mi Nu? How can I finally change, really change?

From 4.30 to 6.30 this a.m. sitting, eyes closed, on burning ankles writing and rewriting the hundred-word summary in my head. Exorcism turned obsession. The exorcist is the ghost. The blurb the book .

Talented mother’s boy, GH, youngest of four, unwisely marries at twenty-three a woman fifteen years older than himself .

Cut ‘unwisely’. Redundant .

Cut ‘than himself’. Redundant .

Cut ‘talented’. Please .

Mother’s boy GH marries at twenty-three accomplished lawyer, thirty-eight. Her money funds his ambition to run independent publishing house .

She flattered me, what a bright little boy you are, what a clever young man, what a promising future. She made me dependent on her. She stopped me growing up. I never grew up. I need to grow up .

But I told you I was too old for you. I said it a million times. Only you were so stubborn I began to believe you loved me .

L .

Life, life, not my life .

Summarize and dismiss. Go to this evening’s meditation with a free mind, a clear mind, an empty mind. Everything described and dismissed .

So .

Mother’s boy GH marries accomplished lawyer whose wealth funds his independent publishing venture .

Cut ‘independent ’.

Why publishing? Why would anyone be ambitious to be a publisher, of all things?

Unable to write yourself, you hide behind other people’s books .

L .

Behind the arrogance of a cultural project .

L .

Three years later, the marriage is already on the rocks when a daughter is born .

I notice all the novels you are publishing are about adultery .

L .

Actually, darling, the majority are murder stories .

Combine the formulas, sweetheart. Uxoricide. Don’t let me get in your way .

L .

Four years later his marriage is already on the rocks when a daughter is born, more or less simultaneous with the beginning of his love affair with T, eight years his junior .

Cut ‘more or less ’.

Cut ‘love ’.

Reinstate ‘love ’.

Too much chronology?

Because wife becomes increasingly hostile and unstable he feels more and more attached to T. To leave, however, would be to expose his daughter to a woman who has left her job and is drinking heavily .

Break for word count .

I always enjoyed writing blurbs .

It’s your blurbs sink the books, sweetheart .

L .

You say too clearly what kind of rubbish they are .

L .

Querulous mother’s boy, GH, marries accomplished lawyer who generously invests in his publishing venture. Just when his passion for his secretary seems bound to sink the marriage a daughter is born, giving GH the excuse for staying with his surrogate mother/wife who never recovers from postnatal …

48 words .

52 to go .

Not a syllable over a hundred .

I cuddled myself in the sheets. How intelligent this man makes me feel. How awake. As if any of this mattered. The bloke is awesomely attached to being who he is. I could see that. To his own shit. I hadn’t hung around failing rock musicians for years without seeing how they all adored the drama of their frustrations. Jonathan’s studio was full of paintings he hadn’t managed to sell. ‘Famous in a manner of speaking,’ he used to say. ‘Famous at the Ealing Rotary.’ Most of them were old girlfriends. He didn’t hide them from me. But from his ex-wife, yes. They weren’t legally divorced, he said. As if there was some other kind. ‘Just that we don’t live together.’ I didn’t mind because I was a million miles prettier than any of them. The wife in particular. She was boss-eyed. ‘I don’t need an exclusive deal,’ I told him. I felt pretty confident. After our afternoons at the studio, I’d text JUST TOPPED UP THE CHERRY WITH CARL IN THE SHOWER. It wasn’t true. I LOVE YOU FOR ADMITTING THAT, he texted. I thought: I’ll get a couple of good songs out of this fling.

‘To be like me, Elisabeth, you must first take refuge in the Triple Gem. But really take refuge. You must first keep the Five Precepts. But really keep them. For a long time.’

Is that what Mi Nu will say?

Read to the end of his life, then get out of here. Quick.

Feeling he would fail in his duty to his daughter if he leaves home, GH abandons love and eventually persuades T to marry her old boyfriend .

How could I do something so stupid?

Years later, the folly, the beauty of his daughter’s reckless, sacrificial love for a man who shares her mother’s drink problem opens GH’s eyes to the squalid compromises he has always sunk to. In a blaze of romance …

What?

Blurb talk .

At which point the bank pulls the plug on …

Cut ‘eventually ’.

Cut ‘old ’.

Cut ‘reckless ’.

His wife seems to live only through him. By now he is her only contact with the world. She punishes him for that. He acquiesces. Hating her, he can’t deal the death blow. She is so fragile. This remarkable psychological thriller puts one man with his back to the wall of a tremendous dilemma that will ultimately …