but instead of a human specimen of salient character emerging from such profound depths, all that comes out is an uncertain, unsteady, unsettled seeker, who listens beyond things and cannot accept empirical reality in its givenness and its causality as a complete world, and who keeps countering it with skulking non-conformity, a pigheaded if-and-but, which in an insidious way dislocates and unmoors all that is conventionally established, generally believed and determined through unanimous agreement, until eventually nothing is reliable anymore, and reality knows as many redirections, subterfuges, and loopholes as a lawyer; and thus it is only fair that such a misbegotten troublemaker (if he does not wish to be counted among the dangerous fools and recalcitrant villains and be truly isolated behind bars) must ultimately accomplish something that will turn his stated ideas of interpreting the world and life into a model for a new kind of life, expanded by a new dimension

whereby, of course, my book might not have remained a private matter—and this is the dilemma that can destroy a conscientious man (for instance, Schwab).

•

I have been working on this book for nineteen years. Sometimes it blazes out of me. Then I can’t do or think of anything else. I drop everything else, I ignore what’s happening around me. Everything gets delayed and disorderly. Important deadlines are forgotten, excellent opportunities are lost. I fail to deliver promised work, I neglect bills, I’m sued, creditors beat down my doors. I won’t see anyone, I open no mail, I disguise my voice on the telephone. I barely sleep, I eat standing up or at my desk, I stop shaving, I don’t even scratch out the dirt from under my fingernails. I’m in a trance, the hours fly. . . until my writing stalls, until eventually I can’t go on, and my doubts about the whole thing return, and fear, rebellion, surfeit, and finally all sacred enthusiasm is snuffed out.

Sometimes, the flame is steadier. For a happy span of time I work a few hours every day with a clear mind. I don’t have to strain my mind, there’s nothing for me to invent. There’s material galore, in heaps, in piles of paper covered with writing. I link up fragments, fill out joints, smooth over bumps. The sober craft of working and reworking makes me feel my growing abilities and capabilities. I am pumped so full of faith and confidence that I soon burden myself with other work—work that brings in cash. I then spend the money right and left: it is a light currency and I’m on top. I feel I can do the impossible, I dare to make all sorts of ambitious plans, I accept obligations I cannot honor—and I soon find myself so entangled in promises and agreements, contracts, coercions, warnings, dunnings, final notices, that I have to apply all my time and energy somehow to complete things I have hastily begun, finally to tackle things that are long overdue, further to delay things I have frivolously promised . . .