{Argument and Conviction [continued]}[3rd February 1970]

[Redbook1:117-118][19700203:2330]{Argument and Conviction [continued]}[3rd February 1970]

Tuesday 3rd February 1970  11.30 pm

            I am rather worried about D, and also about my attitude towards him.  He seems to have found a peculiar knack of using both possibilities or sides of an argument as arguments in his favour.  I think it was George Orwell -- or was it E.M Forster? -- who gave the classic example of this: the tradesman who says that these are the best apples to be had and how can I expect the best apples at this price?  I lent D Ruthless Rhymes and More Ruthless Rhymes last night, thinking he would be amused.  Tonight I collected them and asked his opinion.  Not much, he said; one was a classic -- the one about the day the Germans landed -- and one other he had heard before, but they were generally pretty sub-standard.

            What staggers me is the way he makes both statements sound like insults!  It is bad that one should be a classic and one he should have heard before; and it is bad that the rest are sub-standard.  The two statements are practically mutually opposed; if he sneers at one, he cannot, logically, sneer at the other!

            But he does.

            Or am I imagining all this?  I wish I was; but it is always happening.  I am not going to become full of self-pity; my life is not nearly as bad, objectively, as, for example, Kipling's early childhood.  But he seems to satisfy something in himself by getting at me; and I find the process carries on, so I in turn get at other people, like S for instance, needlessly.  That is what is most awful; I can stop it, and I will, but other horrible remarks slip out before I realise fully what I am doing to people.

            'It's not what they say; it's the way they say it.’

            There are times when M says things at which I quite irrationally want to shout.  It's all subjective; what is really happening -- which means what? -- bears little relation to what one sees, in this field.

            I think it is time I was up and away.

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