At the request of an old friend, I have lately been rendering into machine-readable form the typescript of a novel I was working on, and ultimately abandoned, at around this time forty years ago. Much of it is missing: I suspect that I discarded scores of pages when I partially cleared out our horrible garden shed some years back. The remaining material is disarranged, and it has been a chore simply organizing it, scanning the scannable and transcribing the rest. And yet…
I was surprised. I’d left off the thing by 1984, convinced (correctly, I think) that a certain puerility woven deep into its conception had doomed the undertaking from the start. As after decades I reviewed the remains I was prepared to regard these with contempt, but somewhat to my surprise my prose—a bit more self-consciously musical with assonance and alliteration than I might essay today—holds up pretty well. I will not attempt to resuscitate the thing, but as I review his work I am disposed to cut early-thirties Rand a bit of slack.
cordially,
I was surprised. I’d left off the thing by 1984, convinced (correctly, I think) that a certain puerility woven deep into its conception had doomed the undertaking from the start. As after decades I reviewed the remains I was prepared to regard these with contempt, but somewhat to my surprise my prose—a bit more self-consciously musical with assonance and alliteration than I might essay today—holds up pretty well. I will not attempt to resuscitate the thing, but as I review his work I am disposed to cut early-thirties Rand a bit of slack.
cordially,