Well, or as Lawrence of Arabia undeniably did when he was writing about Don Quixote.
Or just look at how many people might have gone through life believing that castles in Damascus was just a phrase, for instance.
Still, what happened next was that I realized just as quickly that writing a novel would not be the answer anyhow.
Or certainly not when your ordinary novel is basically expected to be about people too, obviously.
And which is to say about certainly a good number more people than just one, also.
In fact without ever having read one word of that same novel by Dostoievski I would readily be willing to wager that Rainer Maria Raskolnikov is hardly the only person in it.
Or that Anna Akhmatova is the only person in Anna Karenina,as well.
So that as I say, there went my novel practically even before I had a chance to start thinking about a novel.
Unless on third thought it just might change matters if I were to make it an absolutely autobiographical novel?
Hm.
Because what I am also suddenly now thinking about is that it could be an absolutely autobiographical novel that would not start until after I was alone, obviously.
And so that obviously there could be no way whatsoever that it could be expected to have more than one person in it after all.
Even though I would still have to remember to keep out of my head while I was writing any of that also, of course.
But still.
As a matter of fact it might even be an interesting novel, in its way.
Which is to say a novel about somebody who woke up one Wednesday or Thursday to discover that there was apparently not one other person left in the world.
Well, or not even one seagull, either.
Except for various vegetables and flowers, conversely.
Certainly that would be an interesting beginning, at any rate. Or at least for a certain type of novel.
Just imagine how the heroine would feel, however, and how full of anxiety she would be.
And with every bit of that being real anxiety in this instance, too, as opposed to various illusions.
Such as from hormones. Or from age.
Even though her entire situation might certainly often seem like an illusion on its own part, paradoxically.
So that soon enough she would be quite mad, naturally.
Still, the next part of the novel would be about how she would insist upon going to look for other people in all sorts of places whether she was quite mad or not.
Well, and while also doing such things as rolling hundreds and hundreds of tennis balls one after the other down the Spanish Steps, or waiting during seventeen hours for each of her seventeen wristwatches to buzz before dropping each one of them into the Arno, or opening a vast number of cans of cat food in the Colosseum, or placing loose coins into various pay telephones that do not function while intending to ask for Modigliani.
Or for that matter even poking into mummies in various museums to see if there might be any stuffing made out of lost poems by Sappho inside.
Except that what one senses even this readily is that there would very likely be almost no way for such a novel to end.
Especially once the heroine had finally become convinced that she may as well stop looking after all, and so could also stop being mad again.
Leaving her very little to do after that except perhaps to burn an occasional house to the ground.
Or to write make-believe Greek writing in the sand with her stick.
Which would hardly make very exciting reading.
Although one curious thing that might sooner or later cross the woman's mind would be that she had paradoxically been practically as alone before all of this had happened as she was now, incidentally.
Well, this being an autobiographical novel I can categorically verify that such a thing would sooner or later cross her mind, in fact.
One manner of being alone simply being different from another manner of being alone, being all that she would finally decide that this came down to, as well.
Which is to say that even when one's telephone still does function one can be as alone as when it does not.
Or that even when one still does hear one's name being called at certain intersections one can be as alone as when one is only able to imagine that this has happened.
So that quite possibly the whole point of the novel might be that one can just as easily ask for Modigliani on a telephone that does not function as on one that does.
Or even that one can just as easily be almost hit by a taxi that has come rolling down a hill with nobody driving it as by one that somebody is, perhaps.
Even if something else that has obviously become evident here is that I would not be able to keep out of my heroine's head after all.
So that I am already beginning to feel half depressed all over again, as a matter of fact.
Doubtless making it just as well that writing novels is not my trade in either case.
Well, as Leonardo similarly said.
Although what Leonardo actually said was that there is no better way of keeping sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.
And which has now given me the curious sensation that most of the things I do write often seem to become equidistant from themselves,somehow.
Whatever in heaven's name I might mean by that, however.
Once, when Friedrich Nietzsche was mad, he started to cry because somebody was hitting a horse.
But then went home and played the piano.
On my honor, Friedrich Nietzsche used to play the piano for hours and hours, when he was mad.
Making up every single piece of music that he played, too.
Whereas Spinoza often used to go looking for spiders, and then make them fight with each other.
Not being mad in the least.
Although when I say fight with, I mean fight against, naturally.
Even if for some curious reason one's meaning would generally appear to be understood, in such cases.
Would it have made any sense whatsoever if I had said that the woman in my novel would have one day actually gotten more accustomed to a world without any people in it than she ever could have gotten to a world without such a thing as The Descent from the Cross,by Rogier van der Weyden, by the way?
Or without the Iliad?Or Antonio Vivaldi?
I was just asking, really.
As a matter of fact it was at least seven or eight weeks ago, when I asked that.
It now being early November, at a guess.
Let me think.
Yes.
Or in any event the first snow has been and gone, at least.
Even if it was not a remarkably heavy snow, actually.
Still, on the morning after it fell, the trees were writing a strange calligraphy against the whiteness.
For that matter the sky was white, too, and the dunes were hidden, and the beach was white all the way down to the water's edge.
So that almost everything I was able to see, then, was like that old lost nine-foot canvas of mine, with its opaque four white coats of gesso.
Making it almost as if one could have newly painted the entire world one's self, and in any manner one wished.
Assuming one had also wished to paint outdoors in such chilly weather, that is.
Although the cold had been coming on for quite some time before that too, naturally.
So that I had already been to the town any number of times in the pickup truck, in fact.
Well, scarcely wishing to be caught short for supplies once I am basically locked in here, obviously.
And which is to say that I have now dismantled a good deal more of the house next door, as well.
Making two toilets fastened to pipes on the second floors of houses which no longer possess second floors that I now see when I go for my walks along the beach.