The Best Book in the World

CHAPTER 7

Learning for Life


It’s evening. The flat smells clean. Titus has showered and made the bed with clean sheets. He is drunk and high. But not from the usual old drugs. This evening he is drunk on new promises and high on the desire to write.

Titus blows into the tube and peers at the screen. A pop-up box soon smirks at him:

Hi, Titus! Is it time to start working? You are welcome. After six hours I will shut down and save your work. If you want to continue after a two-hour break, you only have to blow into the tube and then you can go on writing. But remember this: if you don’t blowstart me for three days then all your files will be deleted and you will have to start from scratch. Good luck!

Bloody monster, Titus thinks. But he isn’t in the slightest bit angry. On the contrary. He realises that he has to surround himself with routines and ‘musts’ to bring this off.

First of all he must write down a checklist. He is going to jot down some fundamental human elements that he must learn more about.

LOVE. Everything about relationships, women, men, intimacy, sex and erotic life. From small talk and air kisses to conversations and f*cking.

PSYCHOLOGY. Human driving forces, leadership and various forms of therapy in practice and theory. Gender theory and mental illnesses. Who wins, who disappears?

CRIME. Offender profiles, reckless violence, financial motives and other driving forces. Perhaps something about racial tensions and class struggle too. Court trials and sentencing practices.

FOOD. Nutrition, food history, tastes, cuisines, cooking and recipe techniques. How to slaughter and skin animals, and cut up into joints. And everything about herring! Herring is tasty!

He looks at what he has written in his list. He can’t think of anything else just now. Wasn’t there more to it than this? Is that all the knowledge he needs to acquire to write The Best Book in the World? Pah! A piece of cake.

Now all he needs is a method of working. The book must be ready in six months. It will take at least three months to put together a rough manuscript. But he can’t collect knowledge for three months and save all the writing to the end, that would be taking too much of a risk. No, he must stake out some guidelines first, so that he knows what to look for when he does his research.

Everything he writes must be kept brief. Every paragraph must be just as full of information as a DIY manual. Every page must have a life of its own. If he digresses even a little, he will be abusing the very soul of the book. The Best Book in the World should, quite simply, be filled to the brim with emotion, plot and facts. Yes, he’s got it there, that’s the heart of the matter, and in just three words! ‘EMOTION’, ‘PLOT’, ‘FACTS’, he writes under the list of everything he must learn more about. To achieve his goal, he must be prepared to slaughter sacred cows, to reduce explanations to a minimum and to cut out all the dead meat in the text. ‘SHORT AND CONCISE’, he writes last of all. He is going to cut it to a minimum; this is going to be trimmer than trim, he thinks, saving the document as ‘Manifesto for The Best Book in the World’.

He leans back and looks at the screen. A good and encouraging day’s work. He deserves a reward. Something really fancy and nice.

It is fairly late and he suddenly feels violently hungry, thirsty and in need of a cigarette all at once. Ah, how quickly the craving came back! Now it was a question of finding a formula to survive the evening. He must have food and water, otherwise he’ll die. But there would be no more cigarettes or alcohol. Because if he smokes then he’ll crave beer or wine. And if he starts drinking beer or wine – then there’ll be no stopping.

He realises that his heart is completely programmed according to old and far too generous reward systems. Tired or miserable? Have a glass! Really, you have done something good? Have a fag! Feeling down and misunderstood? Have a glass and a fag! A mistake? A success? Have two, they are so little!

No, if he is going to succeed, then he’ll have to re-program his brain. Program it back to how it was, so that it will work like it did when he was a child, before his brain had learnt that it was fun to smoke and drink. It is not about being brainwashed – quite the opposite. His skull has been brainwashed time and time again for far too long. Rinsed and soaked in alcohol and nicotine, his mind has become frayed and bleached. But now his brain will have to manage entirely without washing powder and become a self-supporting ecological system. Every time he feels the craving, he must focus on good thoughts instead of on spirits and ciggies. Good thoughts, good pictures. Models.

He tries to find good pictures that he can produce quickly to block the pathways where his brain starts to wander in the wrong direction. He flips through the slides of threat and reward images inside his head for a few minutes, picks the best and discards the rest. Finally he settles for two that he will use as and when required.

In one of the pictures, he is an adult man the size of a baby. He is lying on his mother’s bosom in what looks like a delivery room. His beard stubble has grazed one of her breasts so that it is pink under his chin. In his mouth he has a cigarette, and in his hand a large glass of whisky. His mother is crying violently and holding her nose.

In the other picture Titus is about twelve years old and as yet with no beard growth. He is lying with his head on the exposed bosom of a young woman, holding a book. You can’t see the young woman’s face but her nipples are stiff and goose-pimpled. Who is she? Titus has a white milk moustache on his lip and he is looking straight into the eyes of the observer, that is, Titus himself.

He switches between the two pictures. His craving diminishes. More and more details appear each time he pulls them out. Distinct or far too distinct? Who cares, Titus thinks. Cerebral images work. They must work! Work, work, work!

Better to be obsessed than dependent. Better to be obsessed than dependent. Better to be obsessed than dependent.