Without anything exciting to read this week, and the US heading towards election day (the only question mark is whether Proposition 8 will pass in California or not...), I turn the pages of the Financial Times Week End, a great paper I try to read every Saturday, but never for its financial information... Gideon Rachman, the FT's senior foreign affairs columnist, has lunch with Alastair Campbell, Blair's former press secretary who is known for his battles with depression and alcoholism (Spin and bare it). After his diaries last year (The Blair Years: The Alastair Campbell Diaries, Knopf, 2007, 816 pp.) he has just published his first novel, All in the Mind (Hutchinson, 2008, 304 pp.), which is reviewed in the same issue. "Campbell's emotional temperament - and his history of alcoholism and depression - arguably made him a risky choice for a stressful job at the heart of government. Before agreeing to work for Blair, he warned his new boss that he had had 'a serious psychotic breakdown' in 1986. Blair's reply was, 'I'm not worried, if you're not worried.' Looking back, Campbell muses, 'I did have time in Number 10 when I was probably depressed, but you just keep going.' It may be that the relentless nature of the job actually helped to ward off depression. It was only after he left Downing Street that Campbell suffered his second serious bout of mental illness - and underwent the treatment that informs his novel."
In the following pages of the FT Fuchsia Dunlop recounts her experience of dining alone at New York's Grand Central Oyster Bar: "Dining alone in restaurants, like other solitary activities, is a matter of perception. If you feel guility about it and think you shouldn't be doing it, it's dreadful." I personally find that the best places to eat alone are hotel restaurants or restaurants at railway stations: you are just another traveler in transit... And, for that matter, yes, Grand Central Oyster Bar is a great place place to eat, by yourself, as many oysters you can...
Talking about solitude, several pages in The Advocate last issue are dedicated to Peter Flinsch, 'one of the greatest creators of gay erotica'. Gay historian Ross Higgins has recently published a collection of works by Flinsch, including his biography (Peter Flinsch: The Body in Question, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008, 192 pp.). Aged eighty-seven, Peter Flinsch was born in Germany. He spent three months in a Nazi work camp after beeing charged of homosexuality while in the army. He emigrated to Canada in the early fifties. "Flinsch's boyfriend moved back to Germany in 1959," writes Matthews Hays in The Advocate, "and while the artist hasn't been in a long-term relationship since, he says the solitude doesn't bother him. 'I have great freedom to paint and work when I like,' he says, adding that a rich cache of memories keeps him content."
2008.11.02
