understating everything, in which case we have to say that they exaggerate understatement, that exaggerated understatement is their particular version of the art of exaggeration, Gambetti. Exaggeration is the secret of great art, I said, and of great philosophy. The art of exaggeration is in fact the secret of all mental endeavor. I now left the Huntsmen’s Lodge without pursuing this undoubtedly absurd idea, which would assuredly have proved correct had I developed it. On my way to the Farm, I went up to the Children’s Villa, reflecting that it was the Children’s Villa that had prompted these absurd speculations. Extinction, I thought, turning away from the Children’s Villa and walking toward the Farm — why not? I’ll need a lot of time — more than a year, maybe two years, maybe even three. Every so often we feel fully competent to create a work of the mind, even one like Extinction, which has to be written down, but then we shy away from it, knowing that we shall probably not be able to stick it out, that we shall make quite good progress at first and then suddenly fail, with the result that all will be lost, and not just the time we have spent — and therefore wasted — in the attempt. We shall have made utter fools of ourselves, maybe not in front of others but in front of ourselves. Not wanting to expose ourselves to such discomfiture, we refuse to make a start, even when we think we are capable of doing so. We procrastinate, as though afraid of being grossly embarrassed, I thought, of grossly embarrassing ourselves. We expect others to perform well, outstandingly well, but we ourselves don’t perform at all; we don’t come up with even the most risible mental product. But that’s how it is, I thought: of everyone else we demand the highest achievements, but we ourselves achieve nothing. Not wishing to lay ourselves open to the awful humiliation of failure, we repeatedly shelve our plan for a written product of the mind and take refuge in any excuse, any subterfuge, that serves our turn. We are suddenly too craven to begin. Yet all the time we have this product of the mind in our heads and want to produce it, come what may. We’ve decided on it, we tell ourselves, and for days, weeks, years, perhaps even for decades, we go around telling ourselves that we have decided on it, yet we never get down to it. What we have in mind is something tremendous, we tell ourselves; sometimes we even tell others, being too vain to keep it to ourselves, but all we are capable of is something utterly risible. I’m going to write something tremendous, I tell myself, yet at the same moment I am afraid of it, and in this moment of fear I have already failed and can no longer begin. We say grandly that what we have in mind is something unique and tremendous. We do not shrink from such an assertion, yet at the same time we lower our heads, take a pill, and go to bed, instead of starting on this unique and tremendous project. That’s how we are, I once told Gambetti. We pretend we’re capable of everything, of the very highest achievement, but can’t even pick up a pen and write down a single word of the unique and tremendous work that we’ve just announced. We all succumb to megalomania, I told Gambetti, in order to avoid having to pay the price for our constant ineffectuality. Extinction, I thought, but to be honest I still had only a vague notion of the form the work should take, though I had thought about it for years. What I have in mind isn’t something unique or tremendous, I told Gambetti, but it’s rather more than a sketch, rather more than an existential sketch. What I have in mind is something worthwhile that I needn’t be ashamed of, I said. I consider myself competent and able to write something that I consider worthwhile because it’s important to me and will give me pleasure. I’m not really a writer, I told Gambetti, only a literary broker dealing in German literature, a kind of literary realtor, as it were, a dealer in literary real estate. It’s true, of course, that anyone who writes so much as a postcard nowadays calls himself a writer, but I don’t, notwithstanding the hundreds of works I’ve tried to write or have actually written. In any case I detest the majority of writers, I said. There are very few that I love, but these few I love dearly. I’ve always shunned writers, especially German writers, and have never shared a table with one. I can’t imagine anything worse than meeting a writer and sharing a table with him. I’m prepared to accept his works, but not their producer. Most of them are bad characters, if not positively repulsive, no matter who they are, and if you meet them they ruin their work for you — they simply extinguish it. People jostle to meet some writer whom they love or admire — or even hate — and this completely ruins his work for them. The best way to liberate yourself from the work of some author that obsesses you for one reason or another — either because you hold it in high esteem or because you detest it — is to meet the author himself. We go and meet the author of a literary work and are instantly rid of it, I told Gambetti. Writers are on the whole the most repulsive people, I told Gambetti. I have to admit that as a young student I actually sought them out, forced my way into their presence, waylaid them, took them by surprise. I even insinuated myself into the company of a number of authors in order to spy on them. But having sought them out, I hated them all without exception and could no longer read their works. All these writers I sought out and spied on, I told Gambetti, now seem to me low, vulgar, stupid individuals who have attained a degree of literary fame but whose company I can do without because they have nothing to offer me but their mediocrity. Everything about them is mediocre, I told Gambetti. Everything about them is redolent of common malice and a base philistinism that battens on megalomania. They are all basically simpleminded, like the books they write and put on the market, I once remarked to Maria. It’s as though for the last hundred years German literature had been misappropriated by provincials. All we have today is provincial literature, I told her, nothing else. I remembered saying this as I walked toward the Farm. Only your writings, I had told her, are great and unique and will endure — we won’t have to be ashamed of them in a hundred years’ time. No, I told Gambetti, I never wanted to be a writer. It never occurred to me, but I always had a desire to write something down, just for myself, and the fact that some of my things have been published here and there is a matter for regret. I’m not