If You Read, You Can Learn To

When You Look At My Life, You Can Go Back To The Late 1930s, What I Saw Was, First Of All, Hitler, He Was Going To Live Forever. Mussolini Was In For 10,000 Years. You Had The Soviet Union, Which Was, By Definition, Going To Last Forever. There Was The British Empire -- Nobody Imagined It Could Come To An End. So Why Should One Believe In Any Kind Of Permanence?

Because I Was Permanently Confused, Dissatisfied, Unhappy, Tormented By Inadequacy, Driven By Wanting Towards Every Kind Of Impossible Future, The Attitude Of Mind Described By 'tolerantly Amused Eyes' Was Years Away From Me. I Don't Think I Really Saw People Then, Except As Appendages To My Needs. It's Only Now, Looking Back, That I Understood, But At The Time I Lived In A Brilliantly Lit Haze, Shifting And Flickering According To My Changing Desires. Of Course, That Is Only A Description Of Being Young.

When A White Man In Africa By Accident Looks Into The Eyes Of A Native And Sees The Human Being (which It Is The Chief Preoccupation To Avoid), His Sense Of Guilt, Which He Denies, Fumes Up In Resentment And He Brings Down The Whip.

For There Is Never Any Way To Go But In.

Novels Give You The Matrix Of Emotions, Give You The Flavour Of A Time In A Way Formal History Cannot.