fifty days of solitude

In a letter sent to me from Hereford, England, the writer D. M. Thomas explained why he had left his academic appointment at American University in Washington, D.C., so precipitously:
"It was a dreadful thing to do - my flight - but I had a sense of peril, as a person and as a writer (the same thing).... I knew that if I spent three months being 'the successful author of The White Hotel' I would quite likely become that and that only. I have to be the unsuccessful writer of the blank page before me."


Taken from Fifty days of solitude by Doris Grumbach