Many of my friends, stranded by the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes, have temporarily given up their film projects and settled down to write that hopeless novel which they could never finish before. Those film projects were more alluring – more necessary – than the lingering novels because they at least held out the prospect of one day bringing them, the openly despised writers, to the kind of fantasy scenarios towards which they have worked all their life. For some, a timbered Elizabethan priory in Sussex; for others a tropical villa perched on a headland with a constant blue bar of sea to make the approach of death feel philosophical. (I’m in the latter category.) It’s a dream both childish and rooted in childhood. It’s a fantasy of safe harbour, you could say, after the storms of anxious careers.
But where would this hypothetical villa be exactly, if the studio bosses ever see reason? Since I live in Thailand, this resting place of splendour and reclusive aloofness can only be in Phuket. But there are many Phukets. I don’t want my last days to be spent with half-naked Aussies on choppers partying with fire eaters on a beach littered with stoned bar girls. I don’t want the infamous Kingdom of Lights installation on Kamala beach suddenly ruining my silent nights with son-et-lumière searchlights and Harry Styles songs. I want my villa to be East Egg all the way, a distant lighthouse and a green light only. But with the strike, the money has come to a standstill. I stand in solidarity and all that, but the prospect of a villa has suddenly receded and this is a critical disappointment. It’s back to the desk in Bangkok, the air pollution, arguments with the landlady and election protests. Real life. This is the point of course: to remind writers that they will never earn $240 million a year.
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