very good reviews. But reviewers are idiots, especially now — it’s all about the kids, and the critics don’t understand anything but blockbusters. I try my best to ignore them, but of course that’s impossible. Actors lie when they say they do. Knowing everyone else is reading the reviews except you is well nigh impossible. And you know anyway, because if it’s a bad review people treat you like a burn victim: “Are you alright?” “Well gee, why wouldn’t I be?” I kept falling asleep during The People Against O’Hara — because there’s an awful lot of plot, and generally I don’t get plots. To this day I have no idea why anybody wanted that dumb Maltese falcon in the first place. I try and tell young writers that they don’t need plots; Shakespeare and Brecht stole them, and Beckett didn’t bother with them at all. What this movie has is Spencer Tracy — Katherine Hepburn was right to say that he was the master, and she the student. He always surprises with the simplicity of what he does — and when I least expect it, I’m hooked. He’s like a good lover in that way, yes — in that way he’s like the man you fall in love with. The most special moment in this film is when Tracy is asked to give a eulogy for — we don’t really know who (or maybe I’d lost the plot at that point) — and we realise as he continues, that he is actually actually reciting a eulogy for himself. The genius is that we see his character realise this very quietly towards the end of his speech. I don't know if you’ve ever delivered a eulogy, or even a tribute to anyone — I have — and usually the stuff I really like about someone else is stuff I really like about myself (or maybe I’m just a narcissist). The other amazing thing about this flic is that it seems like just another stupid movie about a hero lawyer, but halfway through we realise Tracy is losing it: his character is getting old, is an alcoholic, and has serious self-doubts. All of this also applies to me of course; so watching Tracy disintegrate was like watching myself disintegrate — but that’s also part of Tracy's genius. I’ve always had self-doubt; don’t know if I’ve talked about it here. (Dammit, there have been at least 365 blogs during this frigg’n pandemic — I’ve written one pretty much every day, so if I cover the same ground twice, please forgive and forget.) Anyway yes doubt, I had the 'Mary Tyler Moore Syndrome' when I was famous. Dear, dear Mary. Well at some point when she was known as 'America’s Sweetheart' — she apparently became faint of heart, convinced she was a fake and a fraud. This happens to me daily; every trip to the computer offers that possibility. I’ve been writing a 2nd book about Shakespeare for approximately a year, and every other day I think it’s all a pile of stinking doggie poo -- and what right have I got to call myself an expert anyway? The way it works with me is that if my life is not full of work and sex and yes love of some kind, and I mean full of it — there must be no pause to think — then paralysing self-doubt may creep in. Yes I’ve tried meditation, and it worked briefly. I have a friend who apparently meditates 5 hours a day. (I don’t know what to say except I don’t believe it.) I’ve never been a very eastern person, I’m driven and western and fundamentally masculine in probably only that way. (Oh, also I like sex far too much, but you probably know that -- meaning I actually have sex when I’m not horny, if I can manage it, which is basically, just sick.) But what is sick in a charming way about this movie is that Spencer Tracy was in real life an alcoholic homosexual, so when he struggles with alcoholism here one wonders what it did to him. The final lovely thing about The People Against O’Hara is that Tracy dies at the end, which makes giving himself a eulogy actually make sense; and one knows that he didn’t or couldn’t live anymore really, because he just wasn’t a very good lawyer anymore. This is scary. This idea of becoming useless, and then dying. I wrote a fan letter to one of my favourite writers the other day — he really is quite famous. I never do this, and I think this is also quite a sick thing to do. I only did it because someone told me he was an Oxfordian and asked me to write to him. (Oxfordian, whaaaa? Ugh, very complicated: someone who thinks Edward de Vere was Shakespeare). I would have been too embarrassed to write him a fan letter out of genuine fandom, but since I had a practical reason I permitted myself to do so. (I won’t tell you the famous writer's name, he’s pretty famous, gay, and black, and the final hint is that he is sexually attracted to men who bite their nails — that is men whose nails show signs of disrupture — I know this from his autobiography.) Anyway, this famous writer kindly exchanged emails with me (I had sent him my 1st Shakespeare book, basically because I was told to) and he said he had enjoyed what he had read, but that he has difficulty reading now because of memory problems and age. This put the fear of God in me. He’s such a Great Writer and a Great Man. And I thought oh, well maybe this will happen to me (not that I am a great man, that’s not what I mean). I just mean I will grow old and not be able to read anymore, because I can’t retain the information from one page to next. And he just said this in passing — like it was somewhat of an annoying inconvenience. I know it’s much more than that, it must be; but anyway. That’s life. And that’s courage. I mean we can come to terms with anything, can’t we? I saw a porch today with hanging lights on it and I wanted to cry. I was riding the bus — because I do that for an hour and a half five nights a week, so my partner can 'work out' alone in the house. It was one of those -- “I should be laughing and talking and swimming and partying, I should not be riding a bus in Hamilton’ — moments. Then it went away. All things pass. Heraclitus said this -- and a couple of other things too. Apparently ‘one cannot step twice into the same river,’ which is I think, ultimately a good thing. Don’t you?
