Friday 28 October 2011

The Rank Amateur and the Roman à Clef


He wrote a book. It was a minor hit. Nothing major. It got a handful of good reviews. It dealt with a defining moment in his life. This defining moment had to do with things falling apart. There was no analysis of the event, only a few details of the event itself, the facts, and some of the things which followed. He was all for people drawing their own conclusions. It was a roman à clef, which was irrelevant in the great scheme of things, seeing as he was a nobody.
A minor hit.
The names, as they say, had been changed. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, he wasn’t that type of person. In any case, the names weren’t important, it was the facts, the event. He hadn’t written the book to examine other people’s motives. He had written it to understand the past, and how the past had affected the way his life had turned out.
Then something happened, or was made to happen. Something directly related to the book, caused by the book, but at the same time unrelated to it. This thing that happened was founded in reality, in the present. He could write a good story, it was true, but when it came to emotions and people who play games, to reality, he was a rank amateur. He had created an aura, and the fragments of that aura were lying on the ground at his feet, shattered, broken beyond fixing. But when he looked more closely he saw that the memory, the memory of the event, the defining moment, was still intact. This was his delusion, the key to the roman à clef. For that he was grateful. Grateful to himself, no one else.  

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