What Is Money, After All? Almost Nothing,

Ian Mcewan Is A Very Good Writer; The First Half Of Atonement Alone Would Ensure Him A Lasting Place In English Letters.

The Telephone Ringing Gave Me A Dreadful Start. I Have Never Got Used To This Machine, The Way It Crouches So Malevolently, Ready To Start Clamouring For Attention When You Least Expect It, Like A Mad Baby.

Throughout The 1960s And 1970s Devoted Beckett Readers Greeted Each Successively Shorter Volume From The Master With A Mixture Of Awe And Apprehensiveness; It Was Like Watching A Great Mathematician Wielding An Infinitesimal Calculus, His Equations Approaching Nearer And Still Nearer To The Null Point.

In Order Really To Write One Has To Sink Deep Into The Self And Become Lost There.

What I Was Afraid Of Was My Own Grief, The Weight Of It, The Ineluctable Corrosive Force Of It, And The Stark Awareness I Had Of Being, For The First Time In My Life, Entirely Alone, A Crusoe Shipwrecked And Stranded In The Limitless Wastes Of A Boundless And Indifferent Ocean.