Brain Vol. 128 No. 2 © Guarantors of Brain 2005; all rights reserved
‘A beautiful creature that jumps’
London, UK
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The career of writers, like that of trees, is often dateable by observable means. To write a play, or a full-length novel, would seem to require a fully operative, healthy body, more than usual physical and, usually, sexual energy, and a capacity for what one could call management, i.e. the capacity to organize material, to hold several themes together, and to take big architectonic views of the work in prospect. There are obvious exceptions to these generalizations, but a study of the lives of writers will usually find all these factors in place. I am not speaking of those whose output is small or limited. I am not talking, for example, about the authors of haiku or short lyrics, or epigrams, but of the long haul required to produce, at its finest, War and Peace, Paradise Lost or David Copperfield. It is impossible to imagine any