Advertisements for Myself [antikvár]

Liké many another vain, empty, and bullying body of our time, I have been running for President these last ten years in the privacy of my mind, and it occurs to me that I am less close now than when 1 began. Defeat has left my nature divided, my sense of timing is eccentric, and I contain within myself the bittér exhaustions ofan old man, and the cocky arguments of a bright boy. 5b I am everything but my proper age of thirty-six, raj anger hasbrought me to the edge of the brutal. In sitting down to write a sermon for this collection, / find arrogance in much of my mood. It cannot be helped. The sour truth is that I am imprisoned with a perception which will settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time. Whether rightly or wrongly, it is then obvious that I would go so far as to think it is my present and future work which will have the deepest influence of any work being done by an American novelist in these years. I could be wrong, and ifi am, then Vm the fool who will pay the bili, but I think we can all agree it would cheat this .collection of its true interest-to present myself as more modest than I am. The reader who is curious to test my claims this instant is advised to turn to the pages of" The White Negro", and to the portion from my new növel which ends this book. He can then decide after a few , hours of his finest attention if he is likely to agree. But those of you who want a sense of clear focus, like to know left from right, and up from not-so-up9 may find it more restful to enter this book by degreés. There was a time when Pirandello could tease ti comedy of pain out of six characters in search of an author, but that is only a whiff of purgatory next to the yaws of conscience a writer learns to feel when he sets his mirrors face to face and begins to jiggle his Self for a style which will have somé relation to hime I would suspect it is not possible, no more than one can remake oneself signature for signature, but I have to admit I am not suited for this sort of confrontation despite two novels put down in the first person and¦ a bloody season of overexpressed personal opinions as a newspaper columnist. To write about myself is to send my style thrmgh a circus of variations and postures, a fireworks ofvirtuosity designed to achieve ... I do not even know what. Leave it that I become an