And now inscribe a book in this SELF (or around this SELF), then you can form a simpler and even more bewitched series: a man who wants to write a book about a man who wants to write a book about a man who wants to write a book . . . and this diabolical circle is our case, dear friend: we dash around in it in a ring like rats in a trap, without ever reaching each other; and when we ask about the meaning and purpose of the whole business and what impels us to ask about a meaning and purpose, then we really get into a maelstrom. But, whatever, I, my SELF, am nothing but my story. And this story is my book. So I can say: I am my book. Regretfully a statement that obviously can’t hold a candle to the Sun King’s proud words “L’état c’est moi!” I haven’t even established my kingdom. I have been trying to do so, but in vain, for nineteen years now, two more years than Joyce spent completing Finnegans Wake. You may at best expect something equally obscure, albeit far less brilliant. I have been a king without a country ever since you installed me as pretender to the literary throne—with, presumably, the respectful trust that I would find my kingdom and define its borders myself. My deepest, deepest thanks, retrospectively! For even while you were alive, you kept an eye on me, you noted snidely any territory I might have overlooked, you noted my annexations with such flattering envy that I kept going out in quest of virgin territory . . . It’s all too understandable: you didn’t want me to disgrace you. You had told everyone so much about my brilliance that any disappointment would have embarrassed you. People were eagerly waiting for my book; it had to be worthy of its initiator . . . Today, at best only Scherping is waiting for it, because money is more important to him than the pleasant spiritual agony of thinking that he’ll never earn back the advances he’s been giving me all these years. Nevertheless, your demise obliges me to show the world that you were not mistaken and that I am not a loser. I would have to be made of stone not to have sensed the meaning of the gazes focusing on me at your funeral. The book that people are expecting of me demonstrates not only who I am, but also who you were.

And I am still ready to write it, at least, this book. After eight agonizing nights and days, I am ready to write YOU, Schwab. For that’s what you are asking of me. How else am I to understand your omnipresence in my mental life? You want me to write you: in your intention to write me as I write you.