At Swim-two-birds Read Online Free Page B

floor, I said. Take it easy, saysthe Shader, you’ll be better when you get that off. Better? How I got home at all I couldn’t tell you.
    Well you did get home, said Brinsley.
    I withdrew my elbow and fell back again as if exhausted by my effort. My talk had been forced, couched in the accent of the lower or working-classes. Under the cover of the bed-clothes I poked idly with a pencil at my navel. Brinsley was at the window giving chuckles out.
    Nature of chuckles
: Quiet, private, averted.
    What are you laughing at? I said.
    You and your book and your porter, he answered.
    Did you read that stuff about Finn, I said, that stuff I gave you?
    Oh, yes, he said, that was the pig’s whiskers. That was funny all right.
    This I found a pleasing eulogy. The God-big Finn. Brinsley turned from the window and asked me for a cigarette. I took out my ‘butt’ or half-spent cigarette and showed it in the hollow of my hand.
    That is all I have, I said, affecting a pathos in my voice.
    By God you’re the queer bloody man, he said.
    He then brought from his own pocket a box of the twenty denomination, lighting one for each of us.
    There are two ways to make big money, he said, to write a book or to make a book.
    It happened that this remark provoked between us a discussion on the subject of Literature – great authors living and dead, the character of modern poetry, the predilections of publishers and the importance of being at all times occupied with literary activities of a spare-time or recreative character. My dim room rang with the iron of fine words and the names of great Russian masters were articulated with fastidious intonation. Witticisms were canvassed, depending for their utility on a knowledge of the French language as spoken in the medieval times. Psycho-analysis was mentioned – with, however, a somewhat light touch. I then tendered an explanation spontaneous and unsolicited concerning my own work, affording an insight as to its aesthetic its daemon,its argument, its sorrow and its joy, its darkness, its sun-twinkle clearness.
    Nature of explanation offered
: It was stated that while the novel and the play were both pleasing intellectual exercises, the novel was inferior to the play inasmuch as it lacked the outward accidents of illusion, frequently inducing the reader to be outwitted in a shabby fashion and caused to experience a real concern for the fortunes of illusory characters. The play was consumed in wholesome fashion by large masses in places of public resort; the novel was self-administered in private. The novel, in the hands of an unscrupulous writer, could be despotic. In reply to an inquiry, it was explained that a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham to which the reader could regulate at will the degree of his credulity. It was undemocratic to compel characters to be uniformly good or bad or poor or rich. Each should be allowed a private life, self-determination and a decent standard of living. This would make for self-respect, contentment and better service. It would be incorrect to say that it would lead to chaos. Characters should be interchangeable as between one book and another. The entire corpus of existing literature should be regarded as a limbo from which discerning authors could draw their characters as required, creating only when they foiled to find a suitable existing puppet. The modern novel should be largely a work of reference. Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before – usually said much better. A wealth of references to existing works would acquaint the reader instantaneously with the nature of each character, would obviate tiresome explanations and would effectively preclude mountebanks, upstarts, thimbleriggers and persons of inferior education from an understanding of contemporary literature. Conclusion of explanation.
    That is all my bum, said Brinsley.
    But taking precise typescript from beneath the book that was at my