You write a book. Then you rewrite it several times until you’re sick of the sight of it. Then you send it out to the gatekeepers, those shadowy creatures whose job it is to pick the nuggets from the literary dross. Two things will most likely happen. One, your book will be rejected countless times. Two, you will become disillusioned with the whole process and consider giving up.
Saul Bellow wrote a book Mr Sammler’s Planet. In it was this thought-provoking passage: ‘… And this brought to mind Kierkegaard’s comical account of people travelling around the world to see rivers and mountains, new stars, birds of rare plumage, queerly deformed fishes, ridiculous breeds of men – tourists abandoning themselves to the bestial stupour which gapes at existence and thinks…
