The First Draft of the First Novel
1 February 1990, Thursday, Glasgow
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Here’s a thing — although he lives on Rose Street, which has an underground station at the far end, young-Toby somehow never learns that Glasgow has a metro. I think this is because, to save money, he walks everywhere he goes. He walks along the Great Western Road to the Hillhead Library. He walks zigzag city centre streets to the Barras Market.
Apart from walking, Toby is also sitting on his chair at his table and making notes on his novel, working title Forgetfulness.
He writes, time imagery, and cremation, and change description of girl to Venetia.
A plan for the form of the novel goes —
Babel’s diary
Babel’s notebook
Babel’s death?
Chapter II notes, among Babel’s possessions at his death —
Among Babel’s other files was a complete indexed list of the graffiti in every toilet in the central Oxford area. He had not only noted the graffiti in the toilets he used regularly, but also in those he might have used or could possibly, whilst drunk, have used & not remembered. This process, which started several months after the estimated period of loss, took up quite a proportion of his time. Partly because he realized that there was only a limited time during which he could note down the graffiti. And some of the walls had already been repainted. / This study of graffiti was, to Babel, absolutely necessary as toilet walls were one of the few sources he could be sure of. He was sure that he had copied out at least some of the graffiti from the walls into his Notebook. The process of research did lead him into trouble though. He was occasionally cruised whilst in the toilets for more than half an hour, he was also arrested twice by the police. However the Oxford police were quite used to arresting academics in public lavatories and nobody heard…
I have not reread it since about 1992, but the plot of Forgetfulness was this —
A contemporary Oxford-based writer, Babel, loses a notebook. This is a disaster. He feels that unless he can reconstruct its contents, down to the last comma, he won’t be able to continue with his work, his great work. And so, thinking it won’t take him more than a month, he starts the labour of making a new/remembered version of the notebook. Hence the graffiti copying. However, the act of artistic reconstruction overtakes the rest of his life. It becomes a mania, and he continues and intensifies his attempts to create a perfect version of something imperfect.