I was a member of the real world, that’s what I thought, wasn’t it? W. says. I was in the business of marketing, of self-marketing, as you have to be in the real world, that’s what I said to myself. And when there was an opportunity, when there was a chance to publish, why should I hold back?
I knew I was writing rubbish, that’s what gets to him, W. says. I was gleefully writing rubbish, gleefully publishing rubbish … They’ll publish any old thing!, I cried to myself. They’ll accept any old drivel!
Shamelessness: that was it, W. says. I am a shameless man. Let the others procrastinate, I have a book to publish, I thought. Let the thinkers think, let the writers write, but there’s an opportunity here … I’m going to slip by unnoticed. I’m going to pass through the gates of publication like an opportunistic ninja …
And I did, didn’t I?: I slipped by unnoticed, W. says. No search lights found me. No klaxons went off, no SWAT teams appeared at my door, no snipers picked me off from rooftops. There was nothing — only eerie silence, as after heavy snow. Nothing — just metaphorical snowbanks, white and silent; just the metaphorical sky, white and silent. My first book was published — and nothing happened. My second book — and nothing happened.
‘Even you, even you hoped you wouldn’t get away with it’, W. says. I wanted to be stopped! I wanted to be punished. I wanted my gleeful smile to be wiped from my face. — ‘Something in you knows you’ve done wrong’.
A bad review: isn’t that what I craved? Indignant emails from experts in my field. Letters of abuse from real scholars … To be told off, as by a stern but kindly headmaster. To be reprimanded, and then re-admitted to class. I wanted standards. I wanted punishment, W. says. I wanted not to be able to get away with it.
What I really wanted was to be shot down, W. says. To feel a hot bullet in my temple. To feel it cracking through my skull. I wanted to be cut down by machine gun fire. I wanted to be bayoneted and collapse in the snow, W. says. He sees it in his mind’s eye: my dying face with a smile that says, justice has been done …
But in truth, there’s no one to offend, not any more, W. says. There are no sentries at the gate. No one cares. It’s collapsed — isn’t that what I’ve taught him? W. says. The academic system’s collapsed. Academic publishing’s collapsed. My book — and the millions of other books, there being more books published now than ever before — meet with perfect silence, perfect indifference. The university’s finished, and we’re in outer space, tumbling head over heels into the darkness.
My Manchester was Old Hulme, of course, W. says. Old, unregenerated Hulme, with its low-rise crescents, system-built in the ’60s and now condemned and nearly deserted. My Manchester was Hulme Free State, which had made squats out of the maisonettes of stained concrete.
That was my bohemian phase, W. says. My-living-like-a-hippie-phase. Only I could never live like a hippie, could I? I could never live like the crusties and ravers around me …
I was a failed bohemian, W. says, living rent free in my squat, with colour photocopies of Hindu gods blu-tacked up on my wall. I was a botched communalist, avoiding my flatmates, emerging from my room only in the early hours, and skulking along the decks so I wouldn’t be seen.
You would have thought that a half-Dane would be stirred by egalitarian ideals, of sharing possessions and resources, of group decisions and non-hierarchical structures, W. says. You would have thought that a half-Dane would be well prepared for communal life: for cooking together and cleaning together and planning socially-minded activities together.
How long was it before the failed bohemian broke the house rules? W. wonders. How long before my squatmates were muttering and grumbling about my inability to clean, my general squalor? How long before they realised that I was utterly incapable of communal living?
Playing Jandek on the shared stereo … did I think that would bind everyone together? W. says. Tacking Louis Wain prints to the living room walls … did I think that would produce fellow feeling? My endless insomniac pacing … did I believe that would endear me to my new squatmates? And, worst of all, the dreadful sight of me when I rose in the morning, rolls of fat visible through the holes in my dressing gown: why should anyone have to see that?
I’m not socialised. That’s the problem, W. says. I’m not housebroken. But there I was, W. says: the failed bohemian, trying everyone’s patience. Didn’t I singlehandedly destroy my commune? Didn’t the failed bohemian drive away all his fellow squatters? I was a living reminder, for them, of how far Old Hulme had fallen. I was the living embodiment of the forces that were destroying Squat City.
But in truth, everyone was leaving, W. says, I’ve told him that. Trouble had come to the crescents: travellers with pit-bulls, French skinheads, rumoured to be on the run for murder, junky casualties of rave culture, ready to stab you with a syringe for loose change.
Armagideon: someone painted that on a crescent wall, I’ve told W. Sky is burnin: someone painted that across the boarded-up health-food shop. Blood inna fyah: across the metal shutters pulled down over PSV. Earth a run red: sprayed across the windshield of a crusty van.
He feels sorry for me, in a way, W. says. I was too late for real counter-culture. I was too late for the rebellions of the ’80s, in which he had a part, W. says. I was too late for politics …
A few years earlier, and I might have taken part in the Poll Tax riots, W. says. A few years earlier, and I would have lived through the glory days of Old Hulme, when sound systems would reverberate from the roofs, and ravers would come from all over the city to the nightclub they’d made by jack-hammering through maisonette walls.
But now the failed Bohemian was one of the last men of Old Hulme, W. says. One of the last residents, along with the Rastas, wandering the empty decks.
The squat became damper. Colder. The walls were blackening. The electricity was cut off. There was no more hot water … The smell of rotting rubbish was overwhelming. Fires burned everywhere on the decks. Packs of half-wild dogs ran on the greens.
Who did I imagine I was? W. says. What fantasy was I living? What film was playing in my head?
‘How on earth did you come across Kierkegaard in Old Hulme?’, W. asks. ‘And why Kierkegaard, of all thinkers?’
In our time — and this is an indictment of our time — a figure like Kierkegaard becomes a magnet for all kinds of lunatics, W. says. That’s how it was for me, wasn’t it, in the middle of Old Hulme? First came my obsession with Kafka, which launched me towards my undergraduate studies. Then came my obsession with Kierkegaard — which launched me, threw me, towards my postgraduate studies. But why Kierkegaard?
Internal exile. That was my solution to the problem of Britain, wasn’t it? W. says. To carry out an internal correlate of the great external voyages of Joyce and Beckett, of Flusser and Gombrowicz. I was going to go inward, just as they went outward. I was going to discover a Paris of the soul, a South America of the mind.