The desert grows
Dr. Yalom, I would like a consultation. I’ve read your novel “When Nietzsche Wept,” and wonder if you’d be willing to see a fellow writer with a writing block.
No doubt Paul sought to pique my interest with his email. […] Ten days later Paul arrived for his appointment. […]
“I was in philosophy at Princeton writing my doctorate on the incompatibility between Nietzsche’s ideas on determinism and his espousal of self-transformation. But I couldn’t finish. I kept getting distracted by such things as Nietzsche’s extraordinary correspondence, especially by his letters to his friends and fellow writers like Strindberg.
“Gradually I lost interest altogether in his philosophy and valued him more as an artist. I came to regard Nietzsche as a poet with the most powerful voice in history, a voice so majestic that it eclipsed his ideas, and soon there was nothing for me to do but to switch departments and do my doctorate in literature rather than philosophy.
“The years went by,” he continued, “my research progressed well, but I simply could not write. Finally I arrived at the position that it was only through art that an artist could be illuminated, and I abandoned the dissertation project entirely and decided instead to write a novel on Nietzsche. But the writing block was neither fooled nor deterred by my changing projects. It remained as powerful and unmovable as a granite mountain. And so it has continued until this very day.”
I was stunned. Paul was an old man now. He must have begun working on his dissertation well over a half-century ago. […]
“Tell me more,” I said. “Your family? The people in your life?”
“No siblings. Married twice. Divorced twice. Mercifully short marriages. No children, thank God.”
This is getting very odd, I thought. So talkative at first, Paul now seems intent on giving me as little information as possible. What’s going on?
