After a morning editing pix, I’m in Carnforth. Had a look round the charity shops and added to my collection of DVDs with Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl. I found one of Joseph Heller’s novels, Closing Time, but I left it on the shelf. Catch 22 must be my favourite novel, and I don’t want to ‘revisit’ that same cast of characters many years later, when death isn’t something that may happen on a bombing raid over Ferrara… but is a grim inevitability. I wouldn’t read Closing Time, for the same reason that I wouldn’t read Go Set A Watchman, by Harper Lee: for fear it might diminish the original.
I've been reading a memoir by Joseph Heller, about growing up in Coney Island. It was pretty poor, considering. He managed to produce one literary
tour de force, Catch 22, but maybe he had nothing left to say after that. He was troubled, in old age, by the fact that he hadn't produced anything else of real quality. I read one of his other novels - Good as Gold - and can't remember a thing about it. Catch 22 is, in contrast, unforgettable...
The garden terrace at Muncaster Castle...
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