No milk therefore no cereal for breakfast. Since Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait the price of crude oil and therefore the price of petrol has risen. Went out to the local restaurant with Paddy. Then for a walk in the forest. Saw the animals in the Little/Children’s Zoo. The fox, the ? marmoset, the boar, the various kinds of pheasant. I need to read some biology. Some loam books. Tried to help Barbora write a letter to a Canadian University. She read me her letter asking Škvorecký1 for help. But she was distracted with waiting for Ezra’s call. Went out to the local restaurant again.
I’ve had a lot of ideas for The Prague Metro. It’s changed, become far more ambitious. Mainly one idea for a second part, to which the part I’ve been thinking about, planning, sketching would be an introduction, explanation, necessitator. But it needs to be such a human, accomplished and immediate book that I’m not sure if I’m capable of writing it, with this little distance from Prague, with this little knowledge of people, with this little idea of style. But it contains so much that I will learn from that it’s worth the failure alone. Success would be too much to expect. But it might take me how long? A year? Two? And I can’t wait to start with three well written pages a day. And I’m worried that I should let it wait, grow. Write the first half, the essay, and work with intuition and love on the second secret half in my head2.
Novelist Josef Škvorecký. I discover that 1990 was the year he retired from his teaching post in the Department of English at the University of Toronto.
I am glad to see young-Toby thinking like this. He seems to have the right values. He’s more concerned with learning than shortcuts to false achievement.
Maybe a year of trying to write his first novel has taught young-Toby some limits, and shown him some possibilities.