When a Book Writes Itself

My book on the place of Wagner in German history is begging to be written. It is being written.

Some time ago, it felt like a first draught was coming together. That was almost a year ago now. Then writing largely stopped. Why?

The answer is that the book kept writing itself. The end seemed in sight. All the elements seemed to be coming together, chapters snapping themselves into place, where they belong. That is why writing needed to cease immediately.

In truth, hundreds of titles had been procured for research reasons, and these were all meant to contribute to the book. Yet they seemed to have been all left out. Leaving them out was not an option if a certainly polished superficiality was to be avoided however much an illusion of coherency it might exude. It is the sort of coherency with which one can only temporarily be satisfied since, over time, one will end up wishing one had been a little more patient in doing more background research rather than rushing to complete a book.

So the question became what the essential titles should be where background research needed to be concentrated. This has turned out to much broader in scope than expected. At the moment, the focus is nineteenth-century history (Blackbourn, Evans, Hobsbawm*), but there are many more issues that need to be tackled, including the recent Nietzsche biography doing its round in pseudo-academic pop culture. As it turns out, it is impossible to understand Nietzsche without knowing Wagner. The majority of Nietzscheans thus don't know anything about Nietzsche.

*not to be forgotten is the fact that Professor Evans is about to release a biography of Eric Hobsbawm and again this book is likely to be prioritised over any tedious Nietzsche hagiography.