I am the last
person to judge it.
As I turn over the big pile of manuscript before me certain things
become clearer to me, and particularly the immense inconsequences of my
experiences. It is, I see now that I have it all before me, a story of
activity and urgency and sterility. I have called it Tono-Bungay, but I
had far better have called it Waste. I have told of childless Marion, of
my childless aunt, of Beatrice wasted and wasteful and futile. What hope
is there for a people whose women become fruitless? I think of all the
energy I have given to vain things. I think of my industrious scheming
with my uncle, of Crest Hill's vast cessation, of his resonant strenuous
career. Ten thousand men have envied him and wished to live as he lived.
It is all one spectacle of forces running to waste, of people who use
and do not replace, the story of a country hectic with a wasting aimless
fever of trade and money-making and pleasure-seeking. And now I build
destroyers!
Other people may see this country in other terms; this is how I have
seen it.
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