The Death of a Writer

Jeremy Bowling gasped as he woke up, escaping the clutches of his nightmare. Hyperventilating in the darkness of his hotel room, he looked around and slowly realised what was real and what had been a dream. There were no figures. There were no voices. There was just the silence of the Parisian night.

Jeremy slipped out of bed and padded across the room to the coffee machine. A dose of caffeine would secure him to reality again. Perhaps he should see a therapist? Perhaps he should write a book?

Two coffees and a shower later and it was morning. The hotel breakfast was passable, which was disappointing for Paris. He should have gone to a brasserie. He could have expensed it.

Over his third coffee, Jeremy thought about his dream. He was being chased by a mob — a desperate, ravenous mob. Was it memories of his childhood? Was it trauma over his second divorce? Was it anxiety over tensions between democratic politics and thuggish populism?

---

Gabriel Laurent was brooding in a cloud of smoke. Jeremy felt a bit like he was meeting a Buddhist monk — a thoroughly depressed Buddhist monk.

“A Nervous Breakdown is your third novel,” he said, “But the first to be widely read internationally. Why do you think this is?”

The Frenchman waved an idle figure.

“Sex,” he said, “And the, uh, civilisational decline.”

“You were a man of the left,” said Jeremy, “But now you’re considered something of a heretic. Your pessism about social progress has even been accused of being symptomatic of fascist tendencies.”

Laurent flicked a speck of ash from his white dress shirt.

“Who wants to blame themselves for believing in the, uh, false God? No one blamed the emperor for being naked.”

“It’s been reported that you have had a sexual relationship with the model Adele Dechamps. Is that true?”

“I don’t claim to be the, uh, the moral man,” drawled Laurent, “But I am the gentleman.”

---

After the interview, Jeremy sat in a café drinking coffee and working on his notes. Vanity Fair were paying him $50,000, plus expenses, for 10,000 words on the pessimistic turn in European literature. It was hard to think in pessimistic terms, though, as he sat in the Parisian sunshine and scribbled.

Whisps of grey were appearing in the blue sky. Jeremy thought about his final exchange with Laurent.

“How do you think you’ll be remembered?” Jeremy had asked.

“For me, it is, uh, it is, uh, presumptuous to think I’ll be remembered at all,” Laurent had said, lighting up his fourth cigarette of the hour, “Will enough people be reading books for anyone to care?”

“You think people won’t be reading books?”

“Or magazines,” the Frenchman had smiled, maliciously.

Jeremy decided not to include this in his piece. The death of Europe was all well and good but the death of journalism was too depressing to contemplate. He closed his book and walked to his favourite Parisian restaurant, where he ordered sauteed morels, boeuf bourguignon and ample quantities of wine. It was just what he needed.

---

That evening, Jeremy spoke at an event at Café de Flore. He talked about culture, liberal democracy, Philip Roth and anti-Semitism. Afterwards, he had a long discussion with a student who was writing her PhD about Charles Maurras. Later, in bed, she told him that she wanted to be a poet. Sleeping, Jeremy returned to the running and the screams.

Picture credit: Todd Baker, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

---

“I’m sorry, Jeremy,” said Paul, “Penguin aren’t interested.”

“Simon & Schuster?”

“No.”

“Damn it, Paul.”

“I’m sorry, Jeremy. I’m doing my best but you’re unproven as a novelist.”

“I’m proven in non-fiction and you can’t sell that book either.”

“No one seems to want a book about Islam in the year 2000, Jeremy,” said Paul, apologetically, “It seems very 1970s.”

Jeremy hung up the phone and put his head in his hands. He had been counting on at least one advance. With two mortgages, child support payments and private school fees, $5 a word was disappearing fast. Perhaps he could go back to The New Republic and ask about that column. It had seemed too reactionary for him but Harvard was not going to be cheap.

Throughout the morning, Jeremy worked on his essay. He had thought that his material was good, but it didn’t seem to come together. He was deleting more than he was writing, until he finally came back to his provisional title: “The darkening shadow”. What did that even mean? What shadows weren’t dark? He smoked a cigarette on his balcony.

It was a gorgeous day outside, but Jeremy could not seem to find the willpower to leave his hotel room. He found himself idly flicking through the TV channels available to him until he found himself watching porn. He loved the European accents of the actresses. Fumbling inside his underwear, he thought about pitching a piece to Playboy on the differences between American and European porn.

Jeremy was startled when his phone rang. It was his son.

“Sorry, Dad, am I disturbing you?”

“No, I’m just, er, writing …”

“We’ve got a school project on journalism,” Henry said.

“Oh, great!”

“And we thought we could interview an actual journalist ...”

Jeremy beamed. It didn’t take much to make you realise how good you had it — especially when it came to your kids.

“So, we were wondering …”

“Of course I will.”

“… if you had Christopher Hitchens’ number.”

Jeremy fell silent and looked down at the porn star’s massive, throbbing penis on the television screen.

---

That night, as Jeremy slept, the mob was chasing him again.

“I WROTE A PIECE ABOUT JOAN DIDION, NEOCONSERVATISM AND THE DEATH OF IDEAS!”

“I WROTE A PIECE ABOUT GEORGE BUSH, THOMAS PYNCHON AND POSTMODERNISM!”

“I WROTE A PIECE ABOUT DICK CHENEY AND MAX HARDCORE!”

“I WROTE A PIECE ABOUT Y2K, DAVID FOSTER WALLACE AND MY MOTHER!”