The Many Faces of Mr Orson Logue

From a novel I’ll never finish.

*

It’s hard to explain. You — that is to say, I — one — to begin again: One lives a life in which one carefully avoids the unseemly appearance of committment, the ties that murder the so-called soul, so that one may continue as the chief driver of one’s experience: one pursues his days in this manner because he may, because he was gifted through the accidents of nascence with a certain social station, and then through the accidents of nature with certain abilities which have allowed him to stockpile — well, a name, a reputation, not to say an excellent agent and a favorable contract for his next two novels; one does it because it is pleasureable, to drink beer on a Tuesday afternoon, for instance, or to move willy-nilly to Ireland, leaving behind a perfectly perfect girl one’s own age who is in possession of a keen wit, a brand-new medical degree and the most fantastic set of breasts (both of which one has done); one does it because it is necessary, for he simply cannot live any other way, and any poor soul who tangles him up in the straight-jacket of responsibility will ineluctably find that she has on her hands a dangerous lunatic with razory teeth and the ability to shoot flames from his mind into hers; and ultimately, one does it unsuccessfully, viz: