dear reader,

I am writing this on a warm afternoon in Lisbon, specifically at Rua Damasceno Monteiro, at 12C if you must know, to be read by you, in the room in which you are sitting, the park bench you are lounging on, perhaps even on a beach, preferably really a bar (reading in the sun has never been my thing; reading is surreptitious should be done in the dark under the covers of a bed with a small torch).

Let’s imagine I’m writing this all at one go (it is so much prettier that way).

That what you are reading has been written solely for you, assigned only to you. And that you, at some point, might ask me, or ask yourself, where all this is coming from, or headed to. And I would say, answer, respond — just so that you do not think you have failed to do anything — that I would tell you if I knew, and that there is perhaps one day when I might know, just not yet.

All not very likely, of course.

But as Johnny Marr — for, I’m not particularly fond of Morrissey’s whine — might sing, « for once in my life, let me get what I want. Lord knows it would be the first time ».

That is, if one can be said to have written a book at all.

*

Sometimes, I dream of being able to just read and write; and to not have to bother about quotidian concerns like rent, sustenance, being able to sustain myself. Least of all employment, or perhaps even worse book sales: it’s somehow a worse feeling to be more concerned about whether people are buying one’s works than if they are of interest to anyone as works; that is the moment you turn a work into a mere product, when writing becomes that most hated of contemporary terms, content.

Sometimes, I dream of having a patron.

But then, at the same time, one can’t help but wonder if it is possible to separate the patronage of your work from you being patronised: there is certainly no possibility of a free hand, of emancipation, when it is daddy who is holding your manus.

And your manuscript will always bear inscriptions of her or his signature: whether anyone one else can see this signing-off, underwriting, be a different, somewhat irrelevant, question.

*

Perhaps then, this is a book about writing reading, reading writing.

And writhing.