R2E Excerpt #46*: The Rising Tide of Words Words Words

"I never travel without my diary," wrote Oscar Wilde. "One should always have something sensational to read on the train." WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY PETER MOORE

WHEN I WAS GROWING UP IN CONNECTICUT, speaking up led to a punch from a Murderer’s Row of older brothers. But after I’d decamped to England, words could propel me out the window and off on adventures, just like that other Peter (Pan). A croc with a clock—the enemy of my enemy—could be my playmate

On the ferry from France to Folkestone I floated on a rising tide of words words words: “I must enter into the intense feeling I had while riding the Tube this morning,” I wrote, “that I honestly feel like a writer, that it was just a matter of time and effort before I am recognized as one. I hope and trust that this is prophetic. After all, I am working on two books at once, am I not?”¹

Ah yes, my literary life—discernible in the distance, like Herbert Pocket’s Capital, in Great Expectations:

“When we gradually fell into keeping late hours and late company,” Charles Dickens wrote, “I noticed that [Herbert Pocket] looked about him with a desponding eye at breakfast time; that he began to look ab…