And now we have to content ourselves with trying not to let down our loved ones, trying not to use too much plastic, and in your case trying to write an interesting book once every few years. So far so good on that front. Are you working on a new one yet, by the way?
I still think of myself as someone who is interested in the experience of beauty, but I would never describe myself (except to you, in this email) as ‘interested in beauty’, because people would assume that I meant I was interested in cosmetics. This I guess is the dominant meaning of the word ‘beauty’ in our culture now. And it seems telling that this meaning of the word ‘beauty’ signifies something so profoundly ugly – plastic counters in expensive department stores, discount pharmacies, artificial perfumes, eyelash extensions, jars of ‘product’. Having thought about it just now, I think the beauty industry is responsible for some of the worst ugliness we see around us in our visual environment, and the worst, most false aesthetic ideal, which is the ideal of consumerism. All its various trends and looks ultimately signify the same principle –
the principle of spending. To be open to aesthetic experience in a serious way probably requires as a first step the complete rejection of this ideal, and even a wholesale reaction against it, which if it seems to require at first a kind of superficial ugliness is still better by far and more substantively ‘beautiful’ than purchasing increased personal attractiveness at a price. Of course I wish that I personally were better-looking, and of course I enjoy the validation of feeling that I do look good, but to confuse these basically auto-erotic or status-driven impulses with real aesthetic experience seems to me an extremely serious mistake for anyone who cares about culture. Have the two things ever been more widely or deeply confused at any period in history before?
Do you remember when I had that essay about Natalia Ginzburg published a couple of years ago? I never told you at the time but I actually heard from an agent in London about it, asking if I was working on a book. I didn’t tell you because you were busy and because, I suppose, it seemed like something small compared with everything that was going on in your life. I’m embarrassed now to admit that I would even make that comparison. But anyway, I was happy about this email at first, and I showed it to Aidan, although he didn’t really know anything about publishing or care very much, and I even told my mother. Then after a day or two I started to feel kind of anxious and stressed about it, because I actually wasn’t working on a book, and I didn’t have any idea what I could possibly write a book about, and I didn’t think I had the stamina to finish a big project like that anyway. And the more I thought about it, the more I felt like it would be really painful and desperate of me to even try to write a book, because I have no intellectual depth or original ideas, and what would I be doing it for anyway, just to say that I had done it? Or just to feel like I was equal to you? I’m sorry if this is all making it sound like you loom large over my inner life. You don’t usually, or if you do it’s in a good way. Anyway, in the end I never replied to the email. It just sat there in my inbox making me feel worse and worse and worse until I deleted it. I could have at least thanked the woman and said no, but I didn’t, or couldn’t, I don’t know why. I suppose it doesn’t matter now. The stupid thing is that I really liked writing that essay, and I did want to write another one, and after I got that email I never did. I know that if I really had any talent I would have done something with my life by now – I don’t delude myself about that. If I tried I’m sure I would fail and that’s why I’ve never tried.
In one of your emails a couple of months ago you wrote that Aidan and I had never been very happy together. That’s not exactly true – we were in the beginning, for a
while – but I know what you meant. And I do wonder why I’ve spent all this time feeling depressed about the end of something that wasn’t working anyway. I suppose on one level it’s just worse to get to the age of thirty without even one really happy relationship behind me. I think I would feel superficially sadder, but less fundamentally broken as a person, if I could just be sad about one break-up, rather than sad about my lifelong inability to sustain a meaningful relationship. But on the other hand, maybe it’s something else. All those times I thought about breaking up with Aidan, and even talked about doing it, why didn’t I? I don’t think it was just because I loved him, although I did, and I don’t think it was the idea that I would miss him, because it never really occurred to me that I would, and to be honest with myself I haven’t. Sometimes I think I was afraid that without him my life would be just the same, or even worse, and I would have to accept that it was my fault. And it was easier and safer to stay in a bad situation than to take responsibility for getting out. Maybe, maybe. I don’t know. I tell myself that I want to live a happy life, and that the circumstances for happiness just haven’t arisen. But what if that’s not true? What if I’m the one who can’t let myself be happy?
Because I’m scared, or I prefer to wallow in self-pity, or I don’t believe I deserve good things, or some other reason. Whenever something good happens to me I always find myself thinking: I wonder how long it will be until this turns out badly. And I almost want the worst to happen sooner, sooner rather than later, and if possible straight away, so at least I don’t have to feel anxious about it anymore.