'One Feels the Benefit Afterwards'

A reader asks a science-fictiony question: “Who is your idea of the Ideal Writer? Either a real writer from the past or a list of characteristics that describes the Ideal Writer.” It’s a silly question, probably related to the “Desert Island Books” gambit, and almost irresistible, though any informed answer would have to be heavily qualified. 

The obvious response is Shakespeare, as universal a writer as one can imagine. Or Dante. Or Tolstoy. Or Proust. You see the dilemma. How to define “ideal”? What balance of stylish flair, moral heft and gravitas qualifies? Something that entertains (in the broadest sense, not just escapism -- Dickens, for instance, or Shakespeare, for that matter) and educates. Such thoughts remind us how ephemeral most writing is, though one of the great consolations of literature is its vastness and variety. Something for everyone. Think how our tastes change across time. Let me make an admittedly whimsical nomination.

 

I happen to be reading Siegfried Sassoon Letters to Max Beerbohm: With a Few Answers (Faber and Faber, 1986). Sassoon (1886-1967) was an English poet, memoirist and veteran of the Great War. He was Beerbohm’s junior by eighteen years. Let me evade my reader’s question about ideals (always a dubious undertaking) and quote an entry from Sassoon’s April 1930 diary:

 

“Conversing with Max, everything turns to entertainment and delectable humour and evocation of the past. . . . Not a thousandth part can be recorded. But I feel that these talks with Max permanently enrich my mind, and no doubt much of it will recur spontaneously in future memories; he is like travelling abroad – one feels the benefit afterwards.”