TSUNAMI OF CONFESSION

A hospital dispatch

Confession in Prison, Goya, 1810-14

Dear Readers,

Until now, I have been shielded from the costs of disability because of our wonderful and vital NHS. This will change when I get home due to the considerable costs of remodelling the house, and my need for round the clock care.

I ask, therefore, that if you enjoy The Kureishi Chronicles, believe in paying for good writing, and want to help with my recovery, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

One of my first jobs in the theatre after leaving university was to work as a stage manager on an expressionist production of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. I have to say I wasn’t much cop as a stage manager, I was far too disorganised, always losing things and in a panic. What I really wanted to be was a playwright. But Steven Berkoff, who directed the production, was very generous with me, and I became his letter writer and sideman for a few months before Ericka Bolton got me a job at Riverside Studios, working for David Gothard and Peter Gill. This meant that I got to see Kafka’s’ Metamorphosis on many occasions, in different theatres around Britain, as we travelled around in a van. Often now, lying helplessly on my back, I think of Kafka’s beetle or insect - what a rich metaphor it is, and how it works on as many levels as you like. I recall also how repulsed and angry Gregor Samsa’s family and other visitors are with him. As his health deteriorates, he is found to be disgusting, and I believe towards the end of the story he is pelted with apples.

I was discussing this the other day with my analyst, and we were saying that in reality, when you have an accident as I did, suddenly becoming as disabled as I am, you find that the people around you are immensely sympathetic. They want to help you. They love to give you things; they rush to your side. They imagine how they might feel if they were in your situation, how they would want to be loved. Kafka is of course a pessimistic writer, and his view of the world will always resonate, but I have found my friends and family, and even people I barely know, to be incredibly compassionate. They write me letters, send me presents, offer to visit, and make extravagant financial offers, which, in the future, I may have to take them up on.