ABSTRACT
And in my solitude in England, doubting my vocation and myself, I drifted into something like a mental illness. This lasted for much of my time in Oxford. . . . I was in a state of psychological destitution when—having no money besides—I went to London after leaving Oxford in 1954, to make my way as a writer. Thirty years later, I can easily make present to myself again the anxiety of that time: to have found no talent, to have written no book, to be null and unprotected in the busy world.
