All Stories, General Fiction

Literary Imitations and Good Mental Health by Michael Bloor

literallystories2014

It’s an April Sunday afternoon, the long, wet, cold winter has not yet relented. Alan sits staring at the blank email on his laptop. He’s meant to be sending a newsy update message to his brother in New Zealand. The rain splatters against the window. His brother was wanting him to come to New Zealand on holiday. Apparently, there’s a beach on the Coromandel peninsula where a hot water spring bubbles up through the sand: you could dig yourself your own hot tub, and sit there watching the tide roll in…

No fuckin’ chance of the Coromandel peninsula this year, bro.

Normally, on a Sunday, he’d be down the allotment. But the weather, the frosting of  his new potatoes and his baby lettuce, has driven him away and indoors. And he really ought to email his brother, who’d be wanting fresh news of their mother, in the hospital after having her foot amputated – a consequence of her diabetes.

It wouldn’t be right to alarm Derek in Auckland, who’d been back visiting the family only last year. But there really isn’t much he can tell his older brother that isn’t bad news. It doesn’t seem fair to tell someone in New Zealand how upset his own mother is on the other side of the world. Some stuff could be delayed til next month’s email, like the departure of his (Alan’s) long-term partner, Louise, who’d frankly deserved better and eventually found it. But the forthcoming closure of Atkinson’s Engineering (two years after being taken over by Capita-Task – registered office in the British Virgin Islands) would be something Derek would almost certainly be reading about, as an overseas subscriber to The Ilkeston Advertiser.

Alan would get some redundancy money, but not much – he’d only been with Atkinson’s seven years. It would certainly be an awful lot less than The Honourable Piers Atkinson had got for selling his shares in Atkinson Engineering two years ago…

Instead of the tricky email to Derek, Alan suddenly finds himself typing a coldly furious email to The Honourable Piers Atkinson. Last night, in his Louise-less bed, he’d been re-reading Herzog, the 1960s masterpiece by Saul Bellow (1915- 2005).The eponymous main character, a middle-aged writer, lecturer and would-be public intellectual, is teetering on the edge of a breakdown and financial ruin, unable to concentrate on his writing. Herzog is being divorced by his wife who has run off with his best friend. The wounded husband takes a kind of comfort in dashing off angry undelivered letters to his psychiatrist, to the priest who converted his wife to Catholicism, to old childhood friends from Chicago’s Jewish district , to dead public figures like the post-war politician, Adlai Stevenson, and so on.

Alan reckons Herzog might’ve been onto something. He finds distraction, if not relief, in tapping out the Atkinson email:

Dear Honourable Sir,

We met previously five years ago, just before Christmas. Old Mulligan, the then Chief Executive, was taking you on a factory tour and you both walked past the door of my Despatch Office. Mulligan introduced me. You shook my hand, wished me ‘A Merry Christmas’ and moved on. May I therefore follow-up the opportunity of our previous acquaintanceship, to tell you that I’d very much like to take your hand again?

I’d like to twist it behind your back to the point where I’d be hoping to dislocate your shoulder. And I’d demand to know whether flogging off the family firm to an asset-stripper and throwing 97 people on the scrap heap ever causes you a wee midnight qualm? And did no-one ever point out to you that squandering your family legacy on a share in an F1 racing team was a clear case of arrested development…?

 Alan has to break off at that point and use the toilet, which he noticed in passing could do with a good clean. Resuming his seat in front of the laptop, he finds his murderous rage has flushed away. Instead, he feels an urge to mail to his old hero, William Morris (1834-96).

Dear William Morris,

It’s not your fault that my uni MA dissertation on your prose romances didn’t lead me anywhere. Nor that I ended up in Atkinson Engineering’s Despatch Office.

I confess that, back then at uni, I never took seriously your revolutionary politics, putting it down to artistic romanticism. But now I realise that your plan for turning The Houses of Parliament into a manure store was well-conceived, and is ripe for revival….

Calmer now, but no further forward, Alan decides to put off the email to New Zealand til tomorrow, but he doesn’t shut down the laptop. He fetches the bottle of Highland Park that Louise had bought him last Christmas, pours the last of the whisky into a glass and raised a silent toast to William Morris. He has one last unsent email to type:

Dear Saul Bellow,

All your life, you were committed to realism; friends and enemies alike would find themselves reproduced in your novels. Your lifelong commitment to realism stemmed from your strong commitment to leftist politics in the 1930s. You even travelled to Mexico City to visit Trotsky, tragi-comically arriving the day after he was assassinated. In Herzog, your suffering writer-hero faces financial ruin in the divorce from his philandering wife.

But you were a notorious philanderer yourself. You were married five times, for Christ’s sake! Did you think there was a special rule for writers, you randy old writer-hypocrite?

He shuts the laptop, drains his glass and looks out the window. It’s late afternoon and the sun is now shining; the first butterfly of Spring is fluttering at the window.

Michael Bloor

Image – Hands on a keyboard from Pixabay.com

Unknown's avatar

Published by literallystories2014

20 thoughts on “Literary Imitations and Good Mental Health by Michael Bloor”

  1. Another wonderful piece! Perfectly judged in all respects and resonant, with me at least – although my beloved hasn’t left me and my mother isn’t sick, I have visited the Coromandel (but not sat in a natural hot spring in the sand) and have definitely drafted furious letters to all and sundry. Which does indeed make me feel a notch or two better. Thanks for this!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thanks Steven, as always, I really appreciate your comments. You’re quite right: drafted, unsent letters/emails can be very satisfying. mick

      Like

      Reply

  2. It’s small revenge but enough to let him apprciate a butterfly. Sometimes, when we are so frustrated that it sours the whole world shouting at the moon is enough. I enjoyed this and hope he did get to visit New Zealand. Thank you – dd

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Ha! Let’s say he did visit, but found the natural hot tub in the sand rather more crowded than he’d anticipated. thanks for commenting, mick

      Like

      Reply

  4. Hi Mick,

    I’ve mentioned many times before how you get the mix and balance of these perfect.

    We have had many of this type and over 90% of them read like a text book. You integrate with skill which gives us something two-fold, knowledge intertwined into a story.

    Excellent as always my fine friend.

    Hugh

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. Mick

    This story is awesome and great!

    I absolutely loved how you used Saul Bellow in this. Through family relations, I used to talk to a couple of distinguished elderly ladies who knew Bellow well (or so they claimed) in high school. As a person who went to high school in the Chicago area and college in Chicago, I was always aware of Bellow’s presence as a writer, massively.

    And HERZOG has always been my favorite book by him, hands down!

    You did a truly great job resurrecting this text in the context of a realistic short story.

    The realism of your stories is always true and terrifically accurate. The characters are always well-rounded, relatable and believable.

    In this piece, you found a way to really bring Bellow and his novel ALIVE again! And to show how relevant literature still is – and will always be. And how consoling it can be for the individual subject, if that person makes the effort.

    You also made me want to delve deeper into the works and life of William Morris, a writer with whom I’m familiar (I’ve read some of his poetry) and don’t know enough about (yet).

    And the letter to the corporate overlord is hilarious and made me feel justified.

    Thanks for writing this, you’ve made my day.

    This tale succeeds at all levels and it will cause me to take down my copy of HERZOG and re-explore this great text in detail – today. (And will be researching Morris, too.)

    Dale

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Thanks for those kind words, Dale – much appreciated. The suggestion about turning Parliament into a manure store is in Morris’s post-revolutionary utopia, News from Nowhere. Elsewhere in LS (under ‘Auld Author’) I’ve written about my favourite of Morris’s prose romances, The House of the Wolfings – that might give you a taster of his prose (a big influence on Tolkien and Yeats). You’ve read some of his poetry; my favourite is his verse translation of the Volsunga Saga, ‘Sigurd, the Volsung.’ There’s a lovely rhythm to his verse, you can imagine him chanting it to the rhythmic beat of his weaving loom – I can easily recall the first couple of verses. He also co-wrote a prose translation with a lovely intro, where he argues that the Volsunga Saga should be as central and cherished as the tales of Troy. He was the first person to translate most of the Icelandic sagas into English. (I think I’ve gone on long enough). mick

      Like

      Reply

  6. Thanks Hugh, supportive as always! My wild guess is that in 500-odd words you should only a maximum of three short-ish emails. Any more looks too cluttered?

    bw mick

    Like

    Reply

  7. Things brings up the interesting topic of what questions would we ask. First thing that comes to mind is the rather prosaic obvious previous girlfriends of whom there are a limited number. I’d be a bit apologetic to at least a couple. Admission – I did exactly that to the most serious one.

    Of the well known, I might do popular writers local Cheryl Strayed, and uber popular Stephen King (your stories are way too long).

    If anyone sees this, who would you write?

    Mr. Mirthless

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Good question, Doug. I think I might ask Archduke Ferdinand why he thought it was a good idea to ride around Sarajevo in an open carriage.

      Like

      Reply

    1. Haven’t tried it myself. But I have thought about it. Decided against it in the end, because the malignant individual concerned (and now deceased) is a convenient receptacle for my bile, enabling me (I believe) to be kinder to the rest of the world – Freud was right about ‘projection’. bw mick

      Like

      Reply

  9. Mick.

    I just wrote an email to myself but didn’t mail it. What’s wrong with me?

    I read Herzog when too young for full effect, yet it was like being baptized in some sort of mid-century “being” juice. It stuck even if I can’t explain what it was. Something slick and double sided.

    Thanks for my afternoon in thought, I think. Nice provocation, for sure! — gerry

    (I did read the email, though, before deleting it. Just like the son of a bitch to put it that way.)

    Like

    Reply

  10. Thanks Gerry, never occurred to me to compose an email to myself – but suppose I didn’t believe me. Maybe Herzog should carry a health warning: reader, do not try this at home. bw mick

    Like

    Reply

  11. Email therapy…. now Alan can write chat gpt these letters and it will write him back, response upon request, and he could ask for it in the persona of Saul or William, for example. Funny and kind of a sad slice of life tale for the modern times! Too bad he can’t make the Coromandel, that sounds quite satisfying.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment