Madeness

Or, as the atheists say: 'It's just there, a given, brute fact.' Well, is that what we are saying? No, we say, because though 'not out of' anything, still, it is made. And there, in that dark, opaque thought which is not a thought, in that sense of the 'madeness' of things which is beyond the grasp of all sense, a thought beyond thought which yet penetrates all our thought and experience of the world with a glimpse of its mystery, of its reality and truth lying beyond both it and beyond us, is the first, primitive, opaque awareness of a meaning we can attach to the name which is not a name, 'God', that name which Moses sought and was given, which named the face which Moses begged to see and was denied the sight of, because it was wrapped in a cloud, 'for no one may see my face and live'.

As both a scholar of the novel and a practitioner, Thirlwell revels in the artificiality of text and language, the sheer madeness of books, and part of the pleasure of reading him is to see him take pleasure in the process of making.