For the first time in my writing career, a book of mine has appeared on various Best Book of the Year lists. I’ve been wondering for a couple of weeks now as to how to respond (at least to myself). I have referenced the various lists and commendations elsewhere on this website, but I felt that this praise for the book, proud and honored as I am of receiving it, needed to be put into perspective (at least to myself). I think of the many good books that didn’t get listed and which deserve to be read. I remember a couple of books of mine that have gone by unnoticed – heartfelt books as worthy to be read, in my view, as Marcelo. So I wanted to say something (at least to myself) about lists and awards and competitions but all I could think of were the words of T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets (East Coker).
And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to
conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot
hope
To emulate -but there is no competition –
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under
conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
