....further question on templates and their denseness: what is it about an earlier writer that provides resources for future writers? It must be something to do with the texture or physiology of the template supplied; the pre-modern imagination has a physiological aspect; inner life is represented in this aspect. Nabokov, translating Lermontov, refers to code sentences which do this job: lips go pale, arms are seized, ground is stamped etc. Above all people physiologically change eg change colour: 'a dull colour spread over his face'. This is particularly true of Conrad; in the Nigger of Narcissus, following a storm, the mariners seem thinner or starved. In Outpost of Progress the physiognomy of the two Europeans alters. These code sentences leave us free to work out or infer what is going on without having every psychic move exhaustively listed for us. The same freedom allows Munoz to visually develop into drawings the Outpost of Progress. The code sentences work for the artist as well. Same conclusion! Is it probable that Will Self will act as a resource in the same way for writers or artists a hundred years from now?
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