AN AUTHOR'S LAMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 122, 19 November 1932, Page 19

AN AUTHOR'S LAMENT

■ "The writing of books is perhaps the dullest of all possible tasks/ laments Joseph Hergesheimer in the " American Mercury." "Every detail connected with it," he says, "is wearisome arid stupid and difficult. There is no such thing as a good,: easy, unlaboured sentence; paragraphs, naturally, are far Harder than sentences; whole books more impossible -of accomplishment than merely difficult. Writing books is purely an illogical process, a species of solitary confinement without the tangible restraint of bars and bolts, imposed.by an idiotic inner, vanity and Sinrhope.- '■ Day after "day," for example; year upon'year, in the morning I go to a small house I own; and there I .write; I write, alone and without interruption, from • ten until one, or two— until-1500 words, in longhand, are finished—-arid then,,-mentally exhausted, physically ■ depressed and irritated, I go out to- lunch: ..' -In .'tho ■ afternoon; oftener. than 'not, I- write again 1500 words. Practically every morning of my life I sit down and face two pens; one- in a silver and .one in a black individual stand, and a pile of blank books in pale brown-paper covers. The empty books are on my right hand; they are nioved-to the left when filled; and no matter how arduously I labour, there ar6 always1 before me blank books than I can" ever master. The thin 'stream of ink running through my pens flows from a' supply 1 will never exhaust. . .

"What makes this process particularly difficult to support is ■ the widespread conviction that my : life ', is ~an Elysium of idleness and pleasure. The public seems to believe that I divide my time between buying neckties, drinking champagne, and conversing, to express.it mildly, with the more-beau-tiful' feminine creatures'/of this, and other lands. I .often, with envious reflections, think about the life I am supposed to lea-d; The reality is so very different." ,