D.M. Thomas

Even if the seas change to salty ink,
and the forests of reeds are cut into pens
and the boundless fields spread with parchments
I could but finish writing a fraction
of my lawlessness.
And should I build a scales,
of the Cedars of Lebanon with Mount Ararat
on one side, my guilt would tilt the balance
to the other.

-St. Krikor Naregatzi (AKA Nareg)

I came upon this poem in D.M. Thomas's novel Ararat. Thomas's books - the most famous of which is The White Hotel - read like overlapping layers of dream, all open-ended and seamless, disconnected yet always coalescing into a whole. I can imagine the linear-minded getting very, very annoyed reading him.

He also takes a damn fine author photograph. Look at the intensity of his poise, the body tilted forward as if about to launch! The eyes focused on some distant target, the half-smoked cigarette angled upward like an artillery piece! And note the wonderful positioning of the "Pushkin" spine on the bookcase; is that, then, the world into which he is about to leap?