The Last Samurai

I said You know a lot of these words don’t you, and he said Yes, and I said Why don’t you practise reading the words you know and you can pick FIVE WORDS that you don’t know and I will explain them.

I don’t know how much of this deal he understood. He asked for Neptune, moulded, commemorate, successful, material, insulate and submarine. I explained them in a manner which I leave to the imagination. He read a few words that he knew and put the book on the floor. Then he went back for another book. What a delightful surprise! In, And, To and our old friend The in Truth and Other Enigmas! Sadly, however, no sign of gutta percha or Neptune.

He put the book on the floor and went back to the shelf.

20 books later I thought: This is not going to work.

I said: Put the book back on the shelf

& he took it down with a cry of glee

so I put it back and I put him in his playpen and he started to sob.

I said: Look, why don’t you look at all the nice pictures in Classic Plastics, and whenever you know a word you can read the word, look at this lovely yellow radio

and he sobbed NOOOOOOOOOO

I said: Well look, here’s Truth and Other Enigmas, that’s got lots and lots and lots of words, let’s see if you know a word on this page

& he sobbed NOOOOOOOOOOO and tore the page from the book and hurled the book away.

I thought: Let’s think of some other simple task. A simple task that can be mastered on a daily basis that will not lead to the transfer of hundreds of books to the floor.

So I took him to Grant & Cutler and I bought a little French picture book and Yaourtu la Tortue and L’Histoire de Babar (as well as a copy of Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne which they happened to have in stock). I taught him a few simple words on a daily basis for a few days and he left the English books alone.

I thought: It worked! It worked!

One day he found some French books on a shelf. I explained five words in Zadig. Soon 20 French books had followed it to the floor. Then he went back to the English books.

I thought: Let’s think of another simple task.

I thought arithmetic could be the simple task. So I taught him to count past 5 and he counted up to 5,557 over a period of three days before collapsing in sobs because he had not reached the end & I said with the genius of desperation that the good thing about infinity is that you know you’ll never run out of numbers. I taught him to add 1 to a number which seemed a simple task & he covered 20 sheets of graph paper with calculations: 1+1=2 2+1=3 3+1=4 until he was carried sobbing to bed. I once read a book in which a boy who studied too much at an early age came down with brain fever and was reduced to imbecility; I have never come across a case of brain fever outside a book, but still I was concerned & would have liked to stop but he sobbed if I tried to stop. So I taught him to add 2 to a number and he covered 20 sheets with 2+2=4 3+2=5.

How old was he asks a reader. I think he was about 3.

He settled down now and as long as he could cover 20 sheets with a particular calculation he did not need to go on to infinity. He did not need to take the books off their shelves. I taught him to multiply single numbers & now on 20 sheets he put times tables for the numbers 1–20. I have no idea how you would make a 3-year-old do this if he did not want to any more than I know how you could stop one that wants to, but when he had done it for a couple of months it was easy to explain variables & functions & increments. So by the time he was 4 he could read English & some French & cover 20 sheets with graphs for x+1, x+2, x+3, x+4; x² + 1, x²+2 & so on.

About a year ago I snatched a moment to read Iliad 16. I had been typing in Melody Maker 1976 and had reached the point in an interview with John Denver where the singer explained:

You know, Chris … I have a definition of success, and what success is to me is when an individual finds that thing which fulfills himself, when he finds that thing that completes him and when, in doing it, he finds a way to serve his fellow man. When he finds that he is a successful person.

It doesn’t make any difference whether you are a ditch-digger or a librarian or someone who works at the filling station or the President of the United States or whatever, if you’re doing what you want to do and in some way bringing value to the life of others, then you’re a successful human being.

It so happens that in my area, which is entertainment, that success brings with it a lot of other things, but all of those other things, the money, the fame, the conveniences, the ability to travel and see the rest of the world, all of those are just icing on the cake and the cake is the same for everybody.