Literary Fiction by Anthony Steyning novelist, essayist, playwright, critic.

-You may now wish to read Quarter to Four under Short Stories. The gradual shifting of language, the imperceptible change of direction and explosive ending may not leave you indifferent. Especially young, female readers will immediately sense what this is all about.

-Sisyphus Rex: O Tempore, O Mores! Cicero used to sigh, discouraged with the violence of his times. I express the same sentiment through a modern fable of two myths, involving King Sisyphus and the Minotaur placed together in the Knossos labyrinth. While not attempting to give Camus a run for his money, I thought it would be incongruous to have these two discuss their take on existence: one a reforming cheat, the other a hybrid half man, half beast! It also is an allegory, dealing with what's happening in the world right now. (So don't pussyphus, read Sisyphus!)

Amsterdam's Hegeraad Café. A. Steyning in black sombrero & white scarf & rapt APPLICANT prime suspect: obviously waiting for Godot... to fall. Or is that Leni Riefenstahl up there? Singing her immortal I'm forever blowing Goebbels? (Read Truth & Lies)

Please help critical thought and literary originality survive; small donations are most appreciated but sadly not coming through:

- Caïdo en la abyección él deciderá asumirla y convertirla en virtud suprema. La escala de valores de la sociedad biempensante no será la suya, sino dàndele vuelta: lo vil se transmuterá en noble y lo noble en vil... This beautiful description is the beginning of an article in the weekend edition of an ordinary Spanish daily, El País, a country with some of the finest newspapers in the world. It's very hard to find this quality of writing anywhere let alone in dailies mostly catering to the lowest common denominator, and as such often not much more than uninspiring rags.

The piece goes on to describe The Thief's Journal and the period Jean Genet spent scurrying along the streets of Barcelona in the 1930's, a petty criminal who with dedication and conviction would one day achieve spiritual perfection, despite the fleas, the scabs, the parasites on his body, despite engaging in male prostitution, in robbery, in all round misery but in the end dying in literary action. Hence 'Saint Genet' as Sartre dubbed him and all of it captured majestically by Juan Goytisolo, a Spanish novelist living in Marakech. The article's accompanied by a black and white shot of a rather distasteful cabaret drag-queen on stage, hairy chest under lipstick and long earrings, and a bodice of silk I wouldn't have liked on a pretty woman let alone on some freak. The difference that a pretty woman can literally wear anything and still be pretty but that an ugly man dressed like ballerina on steroids remains an aberration. Still, the photograph drives home the demimonde in which Genet and his gay sailor clients gyrated back then.

I'll attempt to translate those first lines myself, giving you a sense of what I felt reading them: Fallen into abject fortune Genet decided to assume her, converting her into some supreme virtue instead. The upward ladder of comfortable society's values never to be his, turning it upside down instead: a place where vileness would be wholesome and wholesomeness vile...

The work of some writers is imbued with politics, when others lamentably manage to brush off the terrible goings-on in their own backyard, as if it were dandruff on their jackets. I'm thinking of Borges, Neruda, Sartre, no heroes of mine, and quite a few others. So I've always tried mixing things up, taking a stand myself and/or have some of my characters deal with timeless issues. The website is witness to this principle, but I've now decided to keep it as literary as possible by slowly transferring all political, military, religious, scientific, and economic observations to my new Blog. It is laced as always with a suitable amount of humour and satire, the way sometimes sad diagnosis or heavy medication are best administered. I hope you'll investigate these re-organized jottings, by going to: steyning.wordpress.com

- Thank you for shaving my wife, the man told me, lips frozen, barely able to move them, after I pulled him from the river, one December morning, in 1995.

- Read my tragi-comedy 1 Act Charlie's Not Home Much Anymore! It's up under Plays, the objective to electrify. A blaze!

-Read about Tape's Last Krapp, in Waiting for Beckett (Essays)

-Sorry, Yeats! Sorry Pound! I don't like poetry needing translation back into its own language to be understood. Obfuscation, go eschew yourself!

- So Louis the Blade asked ' Hey, Pete, packin' heat?' But why should I, I'm like him, not caring much for guns, leaving traces, attracting footsteps, quiet murders what I want.

I Ran!

Ever see the mentally disturbed raging in the street, shouting and gesticulating at nobody in particular, at empty space? There’s something tragic about them, and there’s nothing we can do to help, except drugging them to keep them semi-comatose.

The opposition in Iran, happily murdered in the street by the authorities for ‘disobeying God’ have found a terrific way to show their disaffection and disillusion with their Government, accusing it, if anything, of gross daily incompetence, and this by protesting on the roofs of buildings, where they can’t be gassed or shot.

But what a sight, crowded rooftops like overloaded decks of large boats in an ocean of evil, thousands shouting and balling their fist at nothing but empty space and thick air. The streets below empty but the crowds roaring from above, eerie, sad, tragic, the sound of nothingness, for now. Because drugged they’re not, and their bodily sacrifice slowly, slowly getting readied for the altar of common sense and decency.

So that in Tehran at least there’s life, perverse life, but still some distant promise, in Pyongyang even that long gone, a city of zombies, of the living dead, stuck in obsessive compulsiveness, where even rulers don’t go fishing anymore, where even rooftops are dead.

Where life itself is fishing on a rooftop, in that constant night....

Café De Pilaren

After the tourist season rolled by locals would reclaim their only watering hole, Bergen a pretty village near the sea where everyone knew everyone, which also could be a form of oppression. Worse than the one stupid tourism imposed, in summer, crowding roads! For is it good that in winter these folks can tell exactly who’s entering, at precisely which time, by the way the old door knob gets turned and the door gets pushed opened, then closed? Hesitantly, firmly, softly, impatiently, with some sort of care or aggressive abandon, followed by the immediate certainty which anecdote would soon be told, over and over and again, one of a collection of only six or seven, heard or overheard a hundred fold! Also knowing beforehand which drink would be ordered and imbibed over how much time, by whom, the tired waiter bringing the bill in the same amount, paid with the same reluctance precisely two hours on. In spring the invading masses welcomed back with predictable relief, a certain gratefulness prevailing, despite their foreign tongue, their loudness and their shouting clothes. And would one want to go to Bergen at anytime? Would one want to live in Bergen at all? By the sea, that one no longer saw! Only a door knob, not loved, feared?!

Confessions of a Feathered Friend

Here I am, sitting on the roof of collected notions, a construction put up over centuries by people wanting badly to be wanted, and for lack of better, inventing someone doing just that. Then attempt making the one who of course is completely invisible, not only visible, but permanent, by building this monstrosity, as if it changes anything. And only because sitting outside, on the grass, playing the same game, cannot be passed on, they think, although this would be so much more genuine.

I landed on the parapet of what feels more like a gaol than a place of inspiration and joy. Built, believe it or not, to keep out many of their playmates, but at least giving me the chance to rest and reflect after one of my own flights of fancy. They call it House of God, but up here wired it electrically while below and at dark shutting doors to keep out the tired, the hungry and the sick as if these suffer by the clock. And making me wonder how they built these enormous structures with a stiff neck, always looking the other way, yet endlessly at and after themselves.

And what about the prejudice that comes with saving your hide before saving the one of others, by the creatures building structures like these? Because even if they have no fur and no hair to speak of, hides they do have, and thick ones, too, though no feathers. Telling us we’re unclean, diseased and defecating all over, when they’re making a mess of things wherever they dwell. Mistrusting and killing each other when they feel like it, in the name of a slow brainwave, they call Lord.

Here, hold my horn-rimmed glasses and my cigar and my Manhattan and I’ll show you in the Wall Street Journal why we stand accused of infesting society. Though look, look at me, I didn’t hurt anyone, releasing my droppings all over the place, spreading viruses or waking up the world with loud cooing all the time. That’s them and almost a business it seems.

Truth, by definition, cannot be prejudice, they say by way of self-defence and unable to take the slightest criticism, insisting that if hundreds of thousands of a certain kind do something, they’re all guilty and subversive to boot, if and when not of the same prayer. But even if I’m peaceful, clean, entertaining, providing and sharing, they’ll still insist they’re right about me. And that’s when I say, as long as there’s one who’s different, one with pin-striped plumage, they should never say ‘They’re all like that!’, don‘t you agree with me? Afterwards hectoring it’s all in the proportions, that true, nothing is absolute except their faith, and claiming all the same to be overwhelmed by us, when actually they’re the ones doing all the overwhelming. Implying we’re the invading kind, taking over their society, and certainly, we have our own vision, at least I do and so do mine and so what? Though we must learn to keep a low profile, not flap our wings too much, because down there they’re in control, not up here, thank who or whatever for that.

No, more I look at them, less I want to be like them despite some of that fleeting success of theirs. Sure, sometimes I wished I could cross my legs and sit like them, and least when reading my newspaper, but as for the rest they’ve lost it. Like if I built myself a granite coop with smart, stained windows and a huge, bolted door, coercing dozens of mine to sit inside and sing dressed up, no longer able to hear the music produced by water and wind, by songbird brothers, and sisters, and others of course.

It’s good to be out looking in, it’s good to be up looking down, it’s good to be few and free and strong, when they’re many and weak. I know I’m sitting on their structures, but I can leave and they can’t, the price they pay for visible permanence. I can float, sail, rise, dive, crossing oceans on my own, eating, drinking, resting, feeling happy and living just as long, with those I love flying along. And I’ve never killed or hurt anyone. So of those two worlds, which is the better one? And this Lord of theirs, does He know what company He keeps, what He has also wrought?

But excuse me, I must go see an ornithologist... about my beak.

Death of a Salesman?

The tribesman turned towards me with oblique, impenetrable eyes, the eyes of primitivity. And the sort of indifference both he and I knew could evaporate in a moment, turning into explosive aggression. But then he did walk away, quietly, not giving a damn, kicking up some dust, turning his back, leaving me silent, mouth dry, heart pounding. It was high noon, and me the only fool not protecting himself from the sun, the only fool daring to seek direct eye contact with life thousands of years old. A walking fossil, a two legged relic, slave of a certain human darkness. With me just such a slave, but one chained to modernity by my ridiculous briefcase.

Still, between the two of us, who's to say who gets to stay, who gets to go? Do you know? Or still unharmed, each getting space to walk away, a last accommodation?

- I have added at least 8 new poems to my collection. Please check them out, they're very special!

And then there's:

- Hey, Mike! Wanna go for coffee?

- No thanks, I drink coffee this late, and my secretary can't sleep all night!

Or the old How do you titilate an ocelot? You oscillate her tits a lot!

- Oh, go practice onomatopoeia!

-The Spanish writer Manuel Alcàntara puts it this way: Somos un pueblo estupendo para la pesca. Si tuviéra rio... ( We Spanish are a nation of terrific fishermen, if only there were a river!) ( He said it, not me. But the fleet is large!)

- Yes, I'd be most impressed meeting someone who's not a slow-burning chemical reaction. Someone not taking in 3 times a day, excreting no waste. Someone equal to the Universe, not a slave to it, not a senseless bubble. Without a penis as a link, born as and staying like a rock, himself a small roving planet. Man, the Planet. Truly significant, not insignificant, not even Promethean, know what I mean?

- Oh, yes. Calls it 'contemplation'! Alone, in the gardens of Castel Gandolfo, Cardinals chased well away.....

-Of course! Why the hell not!? Isn't he just another walking combustion, though a fancy one?

- Mordecai Richler: 'Twas the bastard Davidoff, and old Glen whot got him!

Kafka’s is the art of comic exasperation deploying absurd even paranoid pseudo logic, labyrinthine insurance company and regulatory double-thought and dead-end speak, at one point probably convincing Derrida and the rest of deconstructionists to become plumbers.

Of course, calling officials, their projects and indirectly the Government itself the Arrangement, says a lot about Kafka's own state of mind. (Personally, I think the Deranged is more like it!)

Kafka created world literature out of the texts that as an insurance lawyer and later a Workman's Compensation Board verifier, surrounded him. He imitated the structures of treacherously simplistic but circular language so prevalent in his daily work. Additionally, the endless incompetence and deliberate deception on the part of both the authorities and the public constantly placed him in the middle of a contention. This would trigger his Walter Mitty imagination, out of self-defence. In circles of bureaucrats taking themselves ridiculously seriously, day-dreaming both his escape from and an extension of recurrent nightmares, in this fashion offsetting these and other health problems, while preserving what was left of his own sanity.

‘The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy heaven. This is beyond a doubt, but doesn’t prove anything against heaven, since heaven means, precisely, the impossibility of crows!’ is a famous example of a statement of breathtaking incongruity. It only makes one laugh, and even the ‘absence’ of crows wouldn't have made it much clearer, only dyslexic atheists debating the ‘impossibility’ of dogs, but this could have been a problem of translation. Anyway, the whole thing a bit like saying a statement by a person doesn't make sense, because the man is mute. Also a non starter, what?

Yes, Kafka was a great tragicomic figure, one for whom in the end even a fire hydrant represented some sort of totalitarian threat. His humour all part of that self-defence, as was exaggeration. I visited the castle in Prague; it's an innocent enough structure, housing contemporary government offices, but as it’s located on a hill overlooking the Moldau, in his dreamy eyes it exercised an authority far beyond its real scope. Yes, this castle is as innocent as one on a medieval Moorish mountain top, or those high coastal fortifications and watch towers in Andalucia, constructed to keep out who, as the invaders were and had been... the Moors themselves!? Part of a paranoiac 'arrangement', in other words. Moors ultimately getting defeated in the interior of the Iberian peninsula, as was to be expected, and by the Christian Kings, not by wily Barbary Coast pirates or some other imaginary naval force. So that these castles were not what they were cracked up to be, more part of someone's fantasy, as in the case of Kafka.

Shades of combatting windmills then, and Don Quijote. Taken in mostly by the symbolism of the Castle in Prague, Kafka did set out to unmask that menacing old fool behind the curtain, much like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, at the end of the day both lodging victory. For Kafka's not only Don Quijote, Kafka's Dorothy, but a much better writer than she!

- Courageously crossing Okeanos, Sir, performing months of strenuous field work in Greece, can you now tell us: Do goats have a clitoris?

-And speaking of stiff upper lips, actually this cliché is dead wrong. Upper class twerps in England speak with a stiff lower lip, producing that Malcolm Muggeridge square mouth and when placing an upright toothpick in it the unmistakeable sound of ghastly gasp speak a/k/a crass class gasp

- It was a narrow street, almost like an alley. He lived in a small apartment on the second floor. Even the furniture somber, there was hardly any light. A sad plant stood in the window, beside a large glass of water. I brought him the documents he had requested, he invited me up for a drink, but we were only a stone's throw away from the large, open square with the busy sidewalk cafés. Why don't we go sit somewhere, I suggested, feeling closed in as soon as I had made it up the stairs. Sensing my discomfort he said he lived in London, in Miami and in Barcelona and had always managed finding living quarters looking out over water. That here he hadn't been so lucky but tried compensating for it, hence the glass of water he suggested, smiling ruefully, pointing at the window sill. Looking out over water indeed, I thought, almost pulling him out of his own flat, down his own staircase, and into the street, preferring to peer out over beer.

(The YouTube video is deliberately playful and technically informal. Here and there the external noise will make you miss a word or two. Therefore I include the full text of what I hope you'll find to be an interesting Hollywood take on our unpredictable Volga friends.)

She’s imperious, she sulks a lot, she has a great dramatic past, she used to be loved and admired by millions but has been in limbo, stuck in a time warp, these days great in theory only, left behind somewhat. Her mansion is vast, her mementos full of dust, her gardens need work, her servant once married to her, opens the door to her self-loathing lover and killing him should the visitor show her respect, but not enough.

Posturing of anger, of madness, of passion, she a living shrine adored perhaps not for herself but for the very need to adore by those needing… to belong. For when deep down one’s the subject of contempt, one pre-emptively out-loves, pretending the lady doesn’t know what she’s doing, her denial an anomaly needing to be corrected. Surgically if necessary and should that fail, attacking her doctors of course.

Sounds like Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, doesn’t it? Well, perhaps it is. Reminding us of Norma Desmond, the jaded star magnificently played by Gloria Swanson, attended to by Max von Mayerling, her silent, vaguely satanic butler and ex-husband brought to life by Erich von Stroheim who keeps a close pulse on the failed writer Joe Gillis played by William Holden, caught in their net. But it’s Mother Russia that I’m alluding to, the Queen Bee to her jealous lover, the KGB (FSB). Protecting her, killing her with kindness, feeding her delusions, forging her fan mail, murdering for her, ignoring her mind and heart, profoundly convinced only it knows what is good for her while keeping her locked in and up. An obscure and violent romanticism on the part of people appointed by her, paid by her, those quietly ferocious servants from hell, the professional incest palpable. People who looked like Boris Karloff, faces like dogs, but more recently sleeker, on the surface kinder, even elegant yet still chafing under suspicions brought on by ancient complexes. A layer of super-patriots in and out of uniform, collectively called Max for the sake of this article and making it so nobody in that nation ever really, really in command.

Can you imagine her? Can you see her striking out, but also at herself, lice deeply embedded in her pelt? That is Russia! And where they come from, nobody knows, but certain national characteristics seem to develop as if the germ of them lodged in local drinking water. Of course, you could blame it all on the indiscriminate terror of Czarist police over hundreds of years, but paranoia and heavy-handed reaction to it seem ingrained in the national psyche and Czars or not, must have slowly started with the people themselves because everything always does, including rejection of expressions of the sort. Rejection that took place in other parts of Europe, terror reigning in most of Europe most of one time, originating in many corners, in many areas like in Robespierre’s France, Cromwell’s England and under Ferdinand II’s Holy Spanish Inquisition, but none turning into the type of cruel national fatalism and paranoia Russia exhibits at all levels, right up till today.

And why she reminds me of Norma, and the KGB (FSB) of Max, agreeing not only that 'She used to be big!' but with the timeless paraphrased retort 'She still is! It's the world that got smaller!', and Joe the would-be but forever-menaced lover, perhaps portraying the West.

- When I was young I got some guacamole all over my ukulele. It was horrible, horible....

- There's no doubt in my mind sabre-toothed cats must have had one hell of a drinking and speech problem

- It was a beautiful Sunday morning. They were very slowly scrubbing, then drying, waxing and shining their dorks, it was an endearing sight.

- In many cases religion is a mild form of insanity, its representatives deeply disturbed yet calculating fantasts, known to be petty, vile and devious

- Oh come on! All forty-some Polanski wanted was to lure, drug, rape and brutalise someone his own size.

- He's so rich, he has gold rings and bracelets and necklaces and even a time piece around his digit. The time always great on thìs digital watch.

- And why call it a watch anyway?. Do we call a pair of glasses a see? Our hand a touch. Our ear a listen. I have a pimple on my smell, did you notice?

- And what's with a fly? Do we call our dog a walk? A fish, a swim? Or if we can do no better than calling an orange an orange, isn't the very least we can do calling a banana... a yellow?

- The dim-witted never give death a second thought. It or le mal-d'être, strictly speaking the condition of suffering from your own intelligence. If you have any. The agony it sometimes creates. The anxiety of it. For better or worse, the ability to recognize yourself in the mirror of animate existence. Cognition commotes, doesn't it?

Posing naked is proving allergy to textiles doesn't leave me any scars (Starlet)

I refuse to read Proust, because of the recent French ban on imported British beef (British Political Commentator)

If you hadn't let him in, I wouldn't have slept with him (Arletty, the French actress, to her accusers, about having had a love affair with a Nazi Luftwaffe general, in occupied Paris, during the the Second World War)

- Having absolutely nothing to do with this: Many obstetricians are obstinate patricians

- Waiting for Henry. Most people spend their life waiting for him. I didn't until I was in my early fifties. After my years of innocence. Innocence is dismissing him, the matter never entering the mind. Now it's: Is Henry coming, on his way? Where do I hide? For Henry's death and death is Henry, isn't he?

- The Dutch word for 'accident' is an 'unhappiness'. An unhappiness occurred on the night of St Peter, when a bull broke loose bolting into Mrs Entwistle's porcelain shop, causing great damage and agony to visitors. An unhappiness, indeed...

- (Looking at menu) " Ah, waiter, we're ready to order: my husband's no Spring chicken, and I'll have a Cesar salad, please!"

- Read about arsenic and black lace around white thighs in A Kiss By The Clowns

- The radio played nightmare music, repetitive electro crap, characterless electrocution stuff of the type used by people like the North Koreans as a brainwash and torture tool. It was Saturday night and apparently a good day for this, though there were different times, warm and hopeful, hypnotic in more sensual ways. Days when lovers talked and people spoke, instead of looking through you, mouths most mute, eyes opaque. He no longer felt like going out, but staying home was hell as well. It was when he threw his radio against the wall and lit a cigarette.

- (Political aside: N-K : Terrible societies where the young get a single career choice: become executioner or victim, nothing else. Whereas historically we have fought for and opened up the beautiful space that exists between these disturbing extremes)

- He danced so smoothly he danced like water, there wasn't a move that he had studied, at least it seemed to her. And if his caresses were as natural and effortless, he could easily cut her breath and make her moan or curl her toes, the woman seated ringside in that Ballroom fantasized. Instinctively straightening her back, pushing her breasts forward, raising her chin, she tilted her head slightly, exposing her neck. Whereupon, one foot softly tapping in rhythm with the music, she spied the woman in his arms through half shut eyes, with him sneaking a peek at her table every time he turned. The band played fast, the brass won out, the couple on the dance floor the first one out, the other woman not realizing she was dancing alone, the man holding her really dancing with another, still sitting on her chair. Or so our lovelorn lady believed, and this thought and her desire imperceptibly pushed her forward on her seat, towards the band, the stand, and a conquest not realistically hers. At the edge of that spotless, that shining parquet floor.

- No one doubted his 'sincerity', not leaving till the toothpaste was finished, lasting about 2 months, sometimes a couple of weeks more. He was a thrifty man, with some smile and some balls, always trying to convince the chubby ones oral sex was the best remedy against their weight gain, afterwards asking 'how he was', of course. This when not kicked out well before, toothpaste thrown after him onto the landing, a black eye the only thing to show for.

- Hitler proves Einstein wrong: contrary to common interpretation E = MC2 stands for Energy equals Madness times the Speed of Light, squared. The great physicist belatedly recognizing the limitless energy emerging from massive daylight idiocy and, somewhat embarrassed as you can see, accepting the amendment I formulated once I opened my own eyes.

(Besides his brain Einstein also had one hell of a tongue, the tip of which nearly reached the end of his chin, suggesting he may have had some other expert abilities.....)

- Read Icarus Accused, a prose poem under Selected Poems about current judicial affairs and lying through distinguished teeth

-- No point in bubbles making love! They'll just burst and die. (see an Archangel's distress under Collected Notes)

Please try keeping up with these Notes as there's loads to hang your hat on, even jump-starting valid notions of your own. As under Banier: " My parents had no children. I was twelve years old." Or that Gide, the French writer, suggested that by the time he's in his fifties a real man should have had syphilis and the Légion d'Honneur, though not necessarily in that order. While Brecht, the German playwright, acidly asked Why be a man if you can be a success? And speaking of the horse's mouth: He should know; by all accounts old Bertold was not much of a man, but a great success. Would that standards vary...

- It's not easy being mediocre he must have sighed, and of course it's hard work. Nearly as much as being brilliant, he reluctantly discovered: Read COBB'S JOLT

Trolley Car Line Greed: as a woolly translation of A Streetcar named Desire under Critique will amuse you endlessly, unless you live in Belgium or in other places where dutiful theatre productions are a 'must'.

Fairy Tales: Cervantes wrote we're not immortal, but we should live life as if we were. This essay is not some tiresome Karma running over Dogma rant, but a passionate plea for dignity in human affairs by an ordinary XXI century citizen, hoping to eliminate 'truth' jobs once and for all. The Proctologist helping the Philosopher to get over himself. More like what Katherine Hepburn had to say, insisting We listen to the song of life...

Tradition: The Critical Core: Read about the treachery of tradition, how obstinate tradition is obsolete tradition, and the way in which Every man's a nation could change all that. How Michel de Montaigne already said it 400 years ago: If I can't govern the world, the least I can do is govern myself. With this author adding that the real, the only Body Politic is me, is you, plus that shooting roots sometimes is healthier than inheriting them...

Truth & Lies: "It's all a misunderstanding," Leni Riefenstahl admitted. "I had a mad crush on Adèle Fitler." (You read it here first!)

Waiting For Beckett: read why I concluded that Godot is a deeply religious play, not in a conventional sense perhaps, but in the way that any Godot would do, as long as we are wanted ...

On Fundament: deals with robotic believers, obstinate literalists willing themselves to denigrate the metaphor, killing life for total lack of moral imagination. Could it be that Mars was formerly inhabited by them, viewing what was left behind...?

Humour/Laughter/Silence: paragraphs 5, 6 and 11 were altered, adding notions that the very best comics are always deadly serious, and that while some like to think of the Messiah as a joke, I submit that much to the contrary Humour is the real Messiah, or that the young Bororo men in Niger dress-up outlandishly once a year and humour a woman in order to win her hand, obliged to prove they can make her laugh and smile rather than impress with crude masculinity: not bad for a desert tribe.

Plus... These days, everybody writing yet again about Freud, I make the link between him and that old Canadian trick of putting a small piece of fur round the keyhole of your front door, when it's freezing cold and dark outside and you're groping to get in... (track the name in my blog)

Those helping the cause are sent the full text of one short story; a matter of kindness repaid.

(It's either this or I shall be forced to introduce a whole new banking concept, convincing rich amnesiacs to open trust accounts, appointing me trustee...!)