| Artistic Vision by IamBoris I�ve been sitting here for some time now trying to make it work. I�m unable to fathom why I thought it was such a brilliant idea to write an autobiography as my final book, for I can�t stop wondering who would ever want to read about a pathetic old man who�s blind in one eye. It�s difficult not to dwell on the feeling that I am little more than a charlatan, for every time I start a project with such lofty intentions, nothing seems to go right. More than once, I�ve had the dreadful thought that I�ve utterly wasted my life. Millions have read my work, but what have they read it for? My God, I haven�t had a respectable idea since 1964, and, looking back, even What a Good Boy Am I was drivel. It�s certainly nothing I would have ever read. Readers should have heeded the advice of the Times reviewer who knew how contrived it was and who thought it should never have been published, because he was right. But the public-oh, my adoring public-cried, �What right does he have to judge?� Well, my friends, he did not get the job for his beguiling smile. A writer himself, he expressed his thoughts better than I did mine, and though he gave me quite the black eye in the literary community, even at the time, I knew I deserved it and, as such, never saw red. Yet with every new book, the people would read as if I were Ernest Hemingway and not Ernest Wright, poseur. And when I tried to improve-and I did every time- my publisher would tell me, �This isn�t what you�ve done before,� not realizing that that was the very point, that I was trying to be more than a hack and to put some real thought into something for once. And so, this time out, I thought I ought to give my audience something truly provoking to read. That is why I made the drastic decision to gouge out my left eye. It would, at last, give me something real to write about. If it accomplishes nothing else, it will make for exciting reading, but hopefully, I will be making a point this time as well. I wonder how this book will be read by the reviewer for the Times. If, by chance, he does favor it, I should put serious thought into authoring a sequel in which I dispose of my right eye. |