A visit in my room
I HEARD A KNOCK ON THE DOOR, and quickly put my notebook under the mattress. I thought that lunch was over and that one of the orderlies had come to call me to the second part of the therapeutic conversations. But no: when I opened the door, Martin Amis was standing there. “May I come...
Head on the block
There’s a cartoon I saw once which shows a writer stepping into a ‘Manuscript Doctor’s Office’. The writer is suffering from a bad case of blockage. The doctor says, “Can I take a look at a sample of your prose, please?” The writer blanches: “I can’t just produce like that, here, with you staring at...
It was the books in his head that killed Michael
I knew I had a sickness, knew something wasn’t right, took me years to figure it out. And then, it was too late. Always too late. A head full of words all queuing up to get out, stories fighting among themselves, dreaming of the white page and me taking to the drink for solace because...
