If everything goes well I will dine with one of my Dutch publishers, his family (a wife and two daughters), two of his colleagues, my godson and his mother tonight. Later this evening my Czech publisher will join us for drinks and jazz, or drinks and cigars.
A while ago a friend told me that Jerzy Kosinski had told an aspiring female poet that she should not strive for a comfortable love relationship. What she needed was an “obsessive, truly destructive love affair”.
Literary festivals, dinners with publishers, award ceremonies and cocktails with diplomats, all fine and on a rare occasion even inspiring, but what we all really need is a truly destructive love affair -- at least if we are looking for poetry or prose.