It doesn't surprise me that the world no longer cares about a book. Larkin anticipated it as he saw England disappearing, no more hedge rows, no more fields, no more countryside and old churches and churchyard to escape to when one grew weary of "cement and tyres," his summation of what we have left. We have too many other pressing concerns. The creature is left to sit at a desk all day, low level irritations he can never surmount. We've mistreated ourselves. Work is a stranger that deprives us of the earth and earthly things.

So no one rings you up and says, 'fine book you wrote.' Silence. These days its a review on Amazon one hopes for, but whole years go by. Who cares about the forest? Who cares about a book? My old father, who understood everything, in the way a Buddha might, he got it, and had praise for the effort, saw, in fact, deep meaning in the story of a college kid, 'a budding theosophist,' as he put it.

And so, my literary efforts given what they are, happy in obscurity, are the unknown, the unseen I carry about when I regard my true profession. I only fear that I have, essentially, become a traitor to my class, for not being a teacher of some sort, but just a barman. It would be self-glory to allude to Chekhov's Grasshopper, the woman who flits away and spends her time with worthless artist types, that boring man, her husband, actually a great man, a doctor deeply respected by his colleagues.

I am kind to people, who come in for wine and dinner. I guess it's in my blood. And it is late when I go home at night to a silent house, the hungry cat, the entertainments in a computer screen to masturbate.