Saturday 6 August - Paris
I've enjoyed my week. Ginette, Marlene, Josh Logan, Emlyn and Molly [Williams], Margalo [Gillmore], Lulu [Louis] and Kiki Jourdan, the Paleys, etc. I've seen La Dolce Vita, which has brilliant moments and is far, far too long.
I have just read, very carefully, Waiting for Godot, and in my considered opinion it is pretentious gibberish, without any claim to importance whatsoever. I know that it received great critical acclaim and I also know that it's silly to go on saying how stupid the critics are, but this really enrages me. It is nothing but phoney surrealism with occasional references to Christ and mankind. It has no form, no basic philosophy and absolutely no lucidity. It's too conscious to be written off as mad. It's just a waste of everybody's time and it made me ashamed to think that such balls could be taken seriously for a moment.
To continue in this carping vein, I have also read The Charioteer by Miss Mary Renault. Oh dear, I do, do wish well-intentioned ladies would not write books about homosexuality. This one is turgid, unreal and so ghastly earnest. It takes the hero - soi-disant - three hundred pages to reconcile himself to being queer as a coot, and his soul-searching and deep, deep introspection is truly awful. There are 'queer' parties in which everyone calls everyone 'my dear' a good deal, and over the whole book is a shimmering lack of understanding of the subject. I'm sure the poor woman meant well but I wish she'd stick to recreating the glory that was Greece and not fuck about with dear old modern homos.
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