Notebook
W, hen the Russians reoccupied Czechoslovakia ten years ago I was driving across 1(aasas making for the Democratic Con,vention in Chicago. I remember the reactuought should be the Presidential candidate: it can best be described as a shrug of alubitions of the Russians. It was little to do tile shoulders. In a sense he was right; there Was nothing to be dime. Soviet insistence fil" hegemony in Eastern Europe comes 'roni a combination of their post-war paranoia and the pre-revolutionary, pan-Slav w,ith Marxist ideas. I have been to Prague cnief of a publishing house had been qii°• In Russia itself the dissidents are not Ziticised for being anti-Communist but for t.ePlaced by a Buddhist who, while ideologicallY unorthodox, was loyal to the status r.,Is Policy of Socialism in One Country, heing anti-Soviet. Since Stalin established "I'Inmunism has been largely an expression ut Soviet nationalism. l) ce 1968 and found that the Communist of Senator Eugene McCarthy, whom I The Only benefit to come from the Russian asion of Czechoslovakia is this: it convinced the West Germans that there could a never be a change to the political bounaries of Central Europe, and they could :ever therefore expect to regain their Eas,111_ territories. This made possible Brandt's ‘-'sitalAo/itik and opened the way to the Heikr ki agreements. It may be an unpalatable an,adox, but the power of the Red Army the will of the Soviets to use it is a r"neipal reason for peace in Europe.
la he, well-PUblicised conflicts between the tlitl-war demonstrators and the police at bemocratic Convention in Chicago in '68 Aindid much to disgust middle-class s ericans with their government. And yet Gtancling as we did in the eye of the storm in rant Park, it was notable how a few dediraated dernonstrators could combine with peri news journalists and the paranoid -ee to create a 'riot'. In the past toevolutionaries had to occupy the Post %Mee and the Presidential Palace: now the31 have only to sieze the imagination of the rep°rters and capture the attention of e television cameras.
adv t. an.age of living in North Yorksc. re is the excellent television reception kro'orti the Bilsdale mast; and what better way sPend a late summer evening than to ciatch a re-run of Washington: Behind de°3ed Doors and relive that dramatic eade of American history. I saw that the series, for which the BBC paid a lot of money, was based on a book by the convicted criminal Ehrlichman and remembered how the train robbers were belatedly banned by the BBC from appearing on their programmes to publicise my account of their exploits. Did the Governors make sure that none of our licence-fee money went to Ehrlichman? Or is it a case of hypocrisy behind closed doors at Broadcasting House?
I go through quite contradictory moods of love and hatred for life in the country — at times finding it so pleasant that I never want to move from my home; at other times so dull that I cannot see how I shall live through the rest of the day. I also rebel against the back-breaking labour that is necessary to maintain a medium-sized house and garden. I spent much of the summer mowing grass and painting window-frames; and now that autumn begins I must saw and split enough logs to last us through the winter. Why, people ask, when you have written a successful book, do you not hire others to do the work? The answer is partly a Puritanical distaste for having others do what I feel I should do for myself; partly because those whom I might hire see my struggles as proper punishment for my pretentious style-of-life; and partly because the marginal rates of income tax make sure that it is less economic for me to earn money and pay wages than to do where I can the work for myself.
Although my knowledge of the new Pope comes from television and the newspapers, I feel instinctively pleased by the choice not because, as Cardinal Hume said, he will be 'good on television' but because he appears to be a man who can see the advantages of social progress yet attacks the half-baked, atheistic theories that so often are associated with socialism. I am particularly pleased to read that he is a 'doctrinal conservative': I dread the Catholic liberals who would turn our Church into a materialistic welfare organisation and dilute its doctrines to the lowest common denominator of the Christian Faith. I greatly admired the last Pope, Paul VI, for ignoring all the theological fashions of the time and reiterating the traditional attitudes of the Catholic Church in such matters as contraception, sexual morality and the ordination of women. Yet it was always inconceivable to me that he could have, or Pope John Paul will, change on these fundamental issues of good and evil; the Holy Spirit has promised never to abandon the Church and is unlikely to do so now because of the lobbying of homosexuals, abortionists and upstart nuns.
What Protestants, and those with a protestant consciousness, can never understand about Catholics is the fundamental role of sin. Often without realising it, they seem to retain Calvin's notion of Justification by Faith whereby the Elect (and they assume themselves to be among the Elect) can do no wrong, so whatever they do must be right. The Catholic, on the other hand, believes that some degree of sin is inevitable; that only Mary, the Mother of God, managed to avoid it. Saints such as the first Pope,St Peter, or a Doctor of the Church, St Augustine, are welldocumented sinners. What is important to a Catholic is not so much a morally hygienic life as repentance for those sins we inevitably commit. Thus many Catholics practise birth control although they would never suggest that it was right. They only hope that when it comes to the day of Judgement the overwhelming temptation to limit their families — whether the small size of their homes or the cost of school fees —will mitigate the punishment meted out in Purgatory.
The onset of autumn and the start of the school term has always seemed the best time to start a new book and I had planned to begin writing a novel on 1st September: but having set myself the task of re-reading Remembrance of Things Past during the summer, I find that I am behind schedule with two hundred more pages of Time Regained to read. In retrospect I feel that this was an inspired preparation for writing myself. As I grow older I find that writing novels becomes more difficult: while with non-fiction I find I can learn from experience and settle down to write a book as a job of work, the process of creating an imaginary world remains mysterious and I can never remember how I did it before. I also begin to fear that to sit alone in my study writing from my imagination is a self frame of mind I read Proust who, with his indulgent thing to do. In this pessimistic Gallic faith in the art of literature, raises my morale. Piers Paul Read
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