CYCLE TWELVE

1. BOOK DIVISIONS. My concept of 'the book', considered as a rectilinear entity embracing a variety of alternative literary possibilities, is of a phenomenon which corresponds to the purgatorial Overworld/Netherworld of both the Son and the Father, and is therefore inherently Heathen. In fact, books are divisible, so far as I am aware, between those which are exclusively composed of words, and those, by contrast, which are also, if not always predominantly then certainly to a degree, subject to the inclusion of photographs. I draw attention to this division because it distinguishes those books which may be equated with the Son from those which should be equated with the Father, as though in a progression from the intellect to the soul or, at any rate, cerebral emotions, the latter no less suggestive of a 'burning Cross' than the former are suggestive, in their verbal exclusiveness, of a plain Cross, the sort of Cross one would associate with the Son in what is a quintessentially purgatorial, and hence Heathen, context.

2. PARLIAMENTARY ANALOGUE. Since I equate books with both the purgatorial Overworld (of the Son) and the purgatorial Netherworld (of the Father), depending on whether they are intellectual (and verbal) or emotional (and photographic), it seems to me that we have an exact analogue, within the compass of a parliamentary democracy, with parliament, which is also divisible, on the above basis, between the Son and the Father or, in literal terms, the Commons and the Lords, with the former corresponding to plain verbal books and the latter to photographic books or, at any rate, to books which contain photos. For it has to be admitted that the Commons is rather more akin, in its legislative essence, to a purgatorial Overworld than to a purgatorial Netherworld, and that it is to the Lords that one would have to turn for a netherworldly parallel with photographic books and, indeed, 'burning crosses', as the emotionality of the Father ensued upon the intellectuality of the Son.

3. SOFTBACKS AND HARDBACKS. It seems to me that a political division of books along left- and right-wing lines can be made, over and above their political content (which is obviously significant), on the phenomenal basis of softbacks and hardbacks, and I venture the theory that, because of its feminine connotation, a softback should be regarded in a left-wing light and, by contrast, a hardback in a right-wing one, so that we have, in effect, a distinction between socialism and capitalism, the mass-produced and down-market softbacks on the one hand, and the rather more expensive and select production of up-market hardbacks on the other hand.

4. LEFT/RIGHT DISTINCTIONS. Now because I regard softbacks as left wing and hardbacks as their right-wing (and masculine) counterparts, it follows that the distinction between 'word books' and 'photographic books', or books only containing words and those, by contrast, which also embrace photos, is not itself susceptible to party-political evaluation, but attaches to such an evaluation in relation to the phenomenality of the type of book in question, i.e. whether softback or hardback. Thus one can proceed, as it were, from verbal softbacks to photographic softbacks on the basis of a Commons/Lords distinction having applicability, in each case, to the Left, while likewise proceeding from verbal hardbacks to photographic hardbacks on the basis of a Commons/Lords distinction whose applicability, in each case, would be to the Right. Hence a left-wing/right-wing distinction between verbal and photographic softbacks on the one hand, and verbal and photographic hardbacks on the other hand - the former pair appertaining to Labour and the latter pair to the Conservatives.