Extract from Chapter 5: The role of emotion in writing

I am not very keen on serious stuff myself. My daughter the doctor asks me, Dad, why do you read trash all the time? And the answer is, because I like trash, that’s why. I find it more fun, and most of the time I find it better written too.

Which reminds me of seeing a play called Tolstoy, by James Goldman. This was a serious play – a deadly serious play – about one of the Most Important Writers in History. Or so they tell me. Anyway, this play featured about two and a half hours of Tolstoy being anguished; apparently the poor fellow had a really miserable time being a rich man in feudal Russia. He felt so guilty, do you see.

Towards the end of the play the author brought on a beautiful dancing girl who hopped about the stage for a few minutes, swinging her skirt and showing us her legs. Very nice legs too. The point of this, apparently, was that Tolstoy had been tortured by sexual thoughts and dreams all his life, and this girl symbolised his lifelong struggle, OK?

Now, the thought that occurred to me was this. If only the playwright had brought on this lovely dancing girl about 90 minutes earlier, and had her accompanied by about eleven others, and then brought them back on periodically throughout the play, wearing different costumes, or, preferably, no costumes at all, then we might all have had an enjoyable evening.

As it was, what we did have was a bone-achingly boring couple of hours about an extremely self-centred man. The play went to London, where, not surprisingly, it died a horrible death.

See, there’re a lot of people out there who just don’t like serious, and no amount of telling them that they should will make any difference.


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