I don’t think I’ve told you this. James Thurber again, remember him? Younger, non-readers may know the name of his creation, Walter Mitty. The New Yorker published a short story (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) in March, 1939, that was based on the eponymous character. It has twice been made into a film, with Mitty played by Danny Kaye (1911-1987) and more recently by Ben Stiller. The name and its story have become a contemporary Aesop Fable. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a Walter Mitty as "an ordinary often ineffectual person who indulges in fantastic daydreams of personal triumphs".

That’s not what I want to write about. I’m thinking of a far less well-known story of Thurber’s about a man whose wife began correcting his stories/tales/anecdotes - in the company of others, at parties! (Very humiliating.)

“No dear, it was a Thursday…it wasn’t raining, it was a sunny day…she wasn’t naked, she was wearing a bikini…he shouted, he didn’t sing..” And so on.

So he began to narrate his dreams because she wasn’t there, ,she hadn’t heard them. But he ran out of dreams. And when he began to tell old dreams, she was right in there:

“it wasn’t a pink cloud. You said it was a blue one….”

See, that might happen to me. Maybe it already has. I’ll start repeating myself and you will correct me. I have a horror of repeating myself. On the other hand, it will mean that you read something of mine before. That’s a comforting thought.

It’s the beginning of immortality

I’ll be back when the battery has re-charged and after I have hit my book again, still working on Footnotes/Bibliography. (When I say hit, I don’t mean hit, I mean I’m manning another assault on my project, hoping to wrap it up, soon.) (I hope.)

And what about Christmas? Throw another blog on the fire.

The day is not yet over. And I finally finished reading Milkman, the much maligned Man Booker Prize winner this year, by Anna Burns. I’ve read several reviews, NOT recommending it, warning people off, in fact, and when I was not well into it and struggling, I was inclined to agree with them and tempted to follow their warnings and quit. Still,l I was curious. So I persevered, but I did something I never do: I skimmed and skipped.

I got through that tedious (to-me) preamble, although I see now that it wasn’t. More than editorial, it set the background and tone of distrust, rumour, malice, tension, fear, helplessness and ironic acceptance - in Belfast, during The Troubles, though time and place are never mentioned, nor are characters given names. Later it got funnier - really. The biggest section (you can hardly call it a chapter) is number Three. I promised myself to get to the end of that and then drop it. That’s when I started to jump and skim…and picked up on other characters and events and funny, really deeply funny, character behaviour.

One of the reviewers I read said he would not recommend the book to anyone. Others simply warned readers. Well , I’ll warn you, too, but as i look back on it, I think it is a remarkable piece of writing. I’m still thinking about it.

I might even read it again.