I remember when we were studying Hamlet at school our master asking us to list all the people who died in the play and then asking us if it would have been better if Hamlet had said and done nothing. It was a hard question because we could all see from the plot it is Hamlet’s indecisiveness that causes one death after another, but when he does act peremptorily he kills the wrong man and he perpetrates an act of pure cruelty towards Ophelia in rejecting her because she is a woman.
I remember at college saying (the way only idiot nineteen years olds can) that it is not always necessary to be victorious or have a name in one’s own lifetime, if one says something that strikes a chord with another human being in a thousand years time then one has been successful. Ideas after all, live for as long as they can pass from one mind to another and all my ideas are in my books, which live until they turn to dust.
I have now been asked to appear on the Lars Larson Show next week. It is a big break. He has many listeners. He is syndicated across America. And yet I wonder if my book about lying will change anything or anyone or if I am just talking to people who will not be born for another nine hundred and fifty years.