The Book that was Never Written

 

Many years ago I read George Orwell’s novel “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”. Orwell did not like the novel saying - it was one of two or three books he was ashamed of, and he only wrote it because he wanted 100 pounds quickly. But I found the book riveting. Set in the 1930’s, It's the bitter story about Gordon Comstock a man who has declared “war” on the worship of money by leaving a promising job as a copy writer and instead taking a low paying job as a book shop assistant, so that he can write poetry. Unfortunately neither the “war” nor the poetry is going well and he finds himself alone, miserable and in abject poverty.

Living in a different country, at a different time, I had nothing in common with the protagonist but for some reason I could not get the story out of my head. I decided to write a novel like that myself. It would be a story about a struggling writer and it would include poems and short stories I wrote earlier as part of the writers output. It would not be written from beginning to end but would be written in fragments. Later on the fragments would be combined together using narrative techniques to form the whole story. The novel would be written in third person but it would be written in such a way as to give the impression that it was really a first person narrative. Sadly it didn't work out.

I found myself with a lot of fragments that could be not fitted together. My third person – first person method was so complicating that even I did not fully understand it. I tried various methods to move ahead but couldn’t. It was too much of a muddle. In the end the novel disintegrated in my mind. I wondered how much time had been wasted in this desperate attempt to write a novel. Then I realized the true value of the novel.

The novel had kept me happy during an otherwise sad time when my life had taken a downward spiral. If not for it I would have become inactive and drifted down. For me the value of the novel was not whether it could be published, but how it made me feel. And subsequently I gained several opportunities due to my strange rendezvous with writing. Sometimes the years we believe we had wasted the most turn up to be the most useful. This may sometimes be true whether it is in art, music, literature or any other creative pursuit not immediately profitable.

 

The best Art book I have ever read, was a relatively small book as art books go by British artist, Adrian Hill. How so many good ideas could be packed into such a small book is amazing. This book doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, but the drawings, in particular, are so “clever”, that it inspires you to take up drawing.

Adrian Keith Graham Hill (1895-1977), enlisted in the Army at the start of World War One, where due to his artistic abilities he was assigned to the Scouting and Sniping section. He had to sketch the enemy in front of allied trenches, in no man's land. Later Hill recalled such a typical patrol as follows:

“I advanced in short rushes, mostly on my hands and knees, with a sketching kit dangling around my neck. As I slowly approached, the wood gradually took a more definite shape, and as I crept nearer I saw that what was hidden from my own line, now revealed itself as a cunningly contrived observation post in one of the battered trees.”

In 1938 while recovering from tuberculosis at a sanatorium, he found that drawing nearby objects from his hospital bed greatly aided in his recovery. This led to Occupational Therapy being introduced in Hospitals, and Hill was invited to teach drawing and painting to injured soldiers and later civilian patients. Hill believed that Art helped divert patients and relieved their mental distress. He also believed that Art appreciation aided recovery and this led to a picture lending scheme (of famous artists' work). Hill himself along with other artists talked to patients about artworks. Hill coined the term (Art Therapy), and published his work in his 1942 book, Art Versus Illness. Hill published many books about drawing and painting and was the first artist commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in 1917.

In his art book: "THE BEGINNER'S BOOK OF OIL PAINTING" he had drawn a black and white drawing, of a 1950's English landscape I think. These drawings inspired me to such an extent that I turned it into a watercolor painting: Both the original drawing and my painting are given below. I only wish I had used more green for the trees and foliage.