The Cathach 2011 - Volume II (PDF) - Sligo Libraries

contrary, have never been more marginal and their enterprise more quixotic and ridiculous);
and, finally, the eclipse of literary forms that once helped writers to survive,
such as the short story.
All the above and more (this list is far from exhaustive) have changed the work
experience of writers: however, I also know everything is cyclical: these circumstances
and the conditions they have produced can’t last forever. The trick, therefore, is to
survive until things change back, in which case my best option, I believe, is to follow
the strategy for successful living proposed by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus. I must
endure cheerfully. In other words, I just have to outlive the fuckers.
Postscript
Over more than twenty-five years, I’ve written many reviews but the kind of critical
scrutiny I’ve applied to other people’s books I’ve never applied before to my own.
It’s been strange. I’ve had to reread books and disinter literary practices I haven’t
handled for decades; I’ve had to think about the way I’ve written and, in particular,
whether my self-effacement strategy is still efficacious while simultaneously
producing a book of interviews about suicide for The Suicide Book, a project that
demanded extreme self-effacement. Now this essay is written and I’m at the end of
this process of self-scrutiny, I’ve concluded that I’ve probably gone as far as I can with
self-effacement and, in future, if I do manage to publish, I’ll probably write in the
third person without the buffer of an invented author between the reader and myself.
This was what I did in A Good Day For a Dog, my last published novel. It’s a lot
simpler, I found.
- Carlo Gébler
1 These were Elaine’s Non-show, given its first performance at the Assembly Rooms, Belfast, 18th November 2003,
as part of Vote! Vote! Vote!, and Silhouette, first performed at the Tricycle Theatre, London, on 24th November
2006, as part of How Long Is Never? Darfour – A Response.
2 The Suicide Book currently languishes in limbo because of concerns about libel and breaches of the privacy laws
and this is why it is absent from the bibliography.
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