Letter to My Editor

Dear Gerry,

You asked me to write an introduction … nothing extravagant, just a tight statement on my own ideas about the aesthetics of the short story and my working methods, and my political point of view about language, plus a bit of an autobiography, how I came to be a writer, the literary milieu I inhabit, how these stories came to be published and where … It took me three weeks’ work to discover that that is the story of my life. I have now given up the project and content myself with the following comments:

It was from an admixture of two literary traditions, the European Existential and the American Realist, allied to British rock music (influenced directly from Blues music, with an input from Country and Western), that I reached the age of twenty-two in the knowledge that certain rights were mine. It was up to me what I did. I had the right to create. I didn’t have to write as if I was somebody not myself (e.g. an imagined member of the British upper middle classes). Nor did I have to write about characters striving to become other persons (e.g. imagined members of the British upper middle classes). I could sit down with my pen and paper and start making stories of my own, from myself, the everyday trials and tribulations; my family, my boss, the boy and girl next door; the old guy telling yarns at the factory; whatever. It was all there. I was privy to the lot. There was no obligation to describe, explain or define myself in terms of class, race or community. In spite of dehumanising authority people around me existed as entire human beings; they carried on with their lives as though “the forces of evil” did not exist. My family and culture were not up for evaluation. Neither was my work, not unless I so chose. Self-respect and the determination of self, for better or for worse. Some of this was intuitive, but not all.

All the best