The Subject Of A Novel

Melodrama Is One Of My Working Tools And It Enables Me To Obtain Effects That Would Be Unobtainable Otherwise; On The Other Hand I Am Not Deliberately Melodramatic; Don't Get Too Annoyed If I Say That I Write In The Way That I Do Because I Am What I Am.

Doing Nothing, Badly.

It Seemed To Scobie That Life Was Immeasurably Long. Couldn’t The Test Of Man Have Been Carried Out In Fewer Years? Couldn’t We Have Committed Our First Major Sin At Seven, Have Ruined Ourselves For Love Or Hate At Ten, Have Clutched At Redemption On A Fifteen-year-old Deathbed?

Like The Characters In Chekhov, They Have No Reserves -– You Learn The Most Intimate Secrets. You Get An Impression Of A World Peopled By Eccentrics, Of Odd Professions, Almost Incredible Stupidities, And, To Balance Them, Amazing Endurances.

There Is A Point Of No Return, Unremarked At The Time, In Most Lives.