The past couple of days have been spent, in part, doing a favour for a friend, and reading the draft of a part of a book he is writing. Alan Carling is a former colleague from my university teaching days, and although he has retired from teaching he has remained with his discipline and is in the process of writing a vary ambitious work on the concept of “Western” civilisation. As I worked my way through one of his draft chapters today I was taken aback to see one of his sections headed “the Allcock insight”. Wow!
I find it very flattering that he has taken one of my earlier contributions sufficiently seriously to make a significant revision to the structure of his argument. (Let’s not go there. It’s far too complicated.) In fact, a substantial part of the chapter I was reading engages with my observation. Naturally this is very pleasing, but on reflection perhaps it is also worrying.
I have enormous respect for Alan’s work, and it would not surprise me if the book, when it is ultimately finished, makes something of a mark in its academic sphere. I can’t avoid the troubling thought, however, that perhaps my most enduring contribution to the cultural life of the country could possibly be a discussion of my incidental contribution to somebody else’s work, rather than any of the things I regard as central to my own projects and purposes. Even so” “Thanks, Alan!”
PS. Perhaps I shouldn’t spend so much time watching the snooker World Championships, and get back to painting.