My brain longs after it. It’s like wanting to be filled, to feel full again, but with what? Am I the world swallower, Galactus, from the X-men series? To an extent yes, writers do create entire worlds, don’t they? I crave it, you know? A story, I want one, it’s been a while, I need my fill, please, something classical of preference, something that has been established as a story, I tend to disregard new models of story telling. Don’t ask me why, it’s just that I feel that I haven’t even come out of the 19th century at times, and the fact is most of the best literature was written in those days. Nowadays very few writers are as exciting as those from the beginning of the 19th century; nowadays writers are just concerned with money, and they don’t live out their lives as writers did then. Richard Holmes is one of those very few who meet my stringent criteria for such writers, being that he is a modern writer in the sense that he is alive, David Lodge is intelligent. Nothing more, there is nothing artistic about him. On the other hand I could be dead wrong and he be an artist of highest rank.

I get these cravings for literature when I’ve worked on linguistics. It’s as if I’ve famished my lit side of the brain, I haven’t managed to convince that side of the values inherent in having a linguistic powerhouse as one’s ally.