From: jmcnair@telus.net
Date: May 27 9:10 AM
Subject: thanks for
The memories. My first London dinner party. Remind me to never accept a similar invitation again. Kidding aside, though, it just occurred to me — Jesus, you must think me shockingly naïve — but it just now occurs to me that the reason I got invited to read in London this time last year was . . . because of you. I mean, you did something, spoke to someone. Didn’t you?
From: lcMackenzie@hotmail.com
Date: May 28 11:05 PM
Subject: the facts, jack
It would be a fine thing if literary publishing were a meritocracy, but it is not. Why, just last night, for political reasons, I was forced to sit through an interminable reading by a young poet in whom the ratio of ambition to actual talent is greater than three to one. Why was she standing there when others, so much better, cleaner, pleasure-giving, toil away unknown but to those who love them?
Jay, if I can do some small thing, I do it gladly. I’d prefer not to discuss what, if anything, I may or may not do to be helpful to you. Can we set that aside, please? If I offer to dry the dishes, or carry in the groceries, or lift something too heavy for you, there’s no need for gratitude. And there’s no need on this other, too. I help if I can, if I may.
From: jmcnair@telus.net
Date: May 29 9:45 AM
Subject: Yes, but
Oh dear. I can’t make up my mind. Is it about just helping out, just lifting and fetching and carrying? I keep thinking about what Berger says in Ways of Seeing. You know, how the image of a man speaks of what he can do to you or for you, whereas the image of a woman speaks of what can be done to her and for her. I can’t . . . sort this through, Leland. If you didn’t offer to carry in the groceries, I’d think you a total asshole. If you do speak my name or whisper Richdale in the ear of someone who might do the book some good . . . oh I don’t know. This confuses the hell out of me.
How’s the new flat? How’s the squash game? Are you looking forward to Hay on Wye?
From: lcMackenzie@hotmail.com
Date: June 15 3:10 PM
Subject: Wye note
Berger also very rightly points out that art is a commodity, in addition to . . . what ever else it might aspire to be, and that those who become sentimental about that, who take the moral high ground, merely refuse to see what is really there.
The Hay Festival a delight as always. Lovely setting, convivial company, wonderful food and drink. Always a pleasure to watch your dinner party nemesis drink too much and make a fool of himself over some young thing. My stints on stage were mercifully brief and no-one threw things at me. Remember that line in The Smoking Diaries where Simon is at Toronto and he pulls out the measuring stick for who has the longest line for book-signings? Doesn’t he say that “a quarter of a dozen” people lined up at his table, while the line for David Lodge seemed, to poor old Simon at least, to go out into the lobby, down the motorway and all the way to the airport?
Well, my dear, you will be pleased to hear that mine was longer than the curmudgeon’s. Much, much longer. But I expect you knew that already. Instinctively, I mean. Not actually. Not practically, I hope. Oh my.
From: jmcnair@telus.net
Date: June 16 9:20AM
Subject: size matters
Size doesn’t matter.
Yes it does and I am . . . um, fully satisfied with facilities on offer . . . oh dear.
But Leland, despite the long separations, can we please resist cyber sex and phone sex? I mean, I don’t mind the occasional phrase like “your nipple stiffening against my hand” for example — I remember that line, it has a lovely resonance, and I do recall it, and the sensation it describes, often and with pleasure. But let’s be cautious about this, okay? To be doing the fuck-me-baby thing from a distance is just . . . crass.
From: lcMackenzie@hotmail.com
Date: June 18 12:10 AM
Subject: decorum
I couldn’t agree more.
Love,
L
PS Fuck me baby