The Great Pursuit by Tom Sharpe Page B

Exforth, but surroundings meant little to Piper. The main thing in his life was his writing

and he continued his routine on the ship. In the morning he wrote at a table in his cabin and

after lunch lay with Sonia on the sundeck discussing life, literature and Pause O Men for the

Virgin in a haze of happiness.
    'For the first time in my life I am truly happy,' he confided to his diary and that band of

future scholars who would one day study his private life. 'My relationship with Sonia has added a

new dimension to my existence and extended my understanding of what it means to be mature.

Whether this can be called love only time will tell but is it not enough to know that we

interrelate so personally? I can only find it in myself to regret that we have been brought

together by so humanly debasing a book as POMFTV. But as Thomas Mann would have said with that

symbolic irony which is the hallmark of his work "Every cloud has a silver lining", and one can

only agree with him. Would that it were otherwise!!! Sonia insists on my re-reading the book so

that I can imitate who wrote it. I find this very difficult, both the assumption that I am the

author and the need to read what can only influence my own work for the worse. Still, I am

persevering with the task and Search for a Lost Childhood is coming along as well as can be

expected given the exigencies of my present predicament.'
    There was a great deal more in the same vein. In the evening Piper insisted on reading what he

had written of Search aloud to Sonia when she would have preferred to be dancing or playing

roulette. Piper disapproved of such frivolities. They were not part of those experiences which

made up the significant relationships upon which great literature was founded.
    'But shouldn't there be more action?' said Sonia one evening when he had finished reading his

day's work. 'I mean nothing ever seems to happen. It's all description and what people

think.'
    'In the contemplative novel thought is action,' said Piper quoting verbatim from The Moral

Novel. 'Only the immature mind finds satisfaction in action as an external activity. What we

think and feel determines what we are and it is in the essential areness of the human character

that the great dramas of life are enacted.'
    'Ourness?' said Sonia hopefully.
    'Areness,' said Piper. 'Are with an A.'
    'Oh.'
    'It means essential being. Like Dasein.'
    'Don't you mean "design"?' said Sonia.
    'No,' said Piper, who had once read several sentences from Heidegger, 'Dasein's got an A

too.'
    'You could have fooled me,' said Sonia. 'Still, if you say so.'
    'And the novel if it is to justify itself as a mode of inter-communicative art must deal

solely with experienced reality. The self-indulgent use of the imagination beyond the parameter

of our personal experience demonstrates a superficiality which can only result in the

unrealization of our individual potentialities.'
    'Isn't that a bit limiting?' said Sonia. 'I mean if all you can write about is what has

happened to you you've got to end up describing getting up in the morning and having breakfast

and going to work...'
    'Well, that's important too,' said Piper, whose morning's writing had consisted of a

description of getting up and having breakfast and going to school. 'The novelist invests these

events with his own intrinsic interpretation.'
    'But maybe people don't want to read about that sort of thing. They want romance and sex and

excitement. They want the unexpected. That's what sells.'
    'It may sell,' said Piper, 'but does it matter?'
    'It matters if you want to go on writing. You've got to earn your bread. Now Pause

sells...'
    'I can't imagine why,' said Piper. 'I read that chapter you told me to and honestly it's

disgusting.'
    'So reality isn't all that nice,' said Sonia, wishing that Piper wasn't quite so highminded.

'We live in a crazy world. There are hijackings and killings and violence all over