A Whelk To The Paradise Garden

OBITUARY (21 April 2006)

For DF Lewis, the ability to know his limitations was a happiness greater than continuously striving with blind ambition.

He was ever expressive of thanks to the Small Press for many writerly joys over the years, allowing him a tiny glimpse at least of being a 'proper writer' in publication outlets well beyond his wildest youthful perception of any possible literary achievements that he could manage in later life.

Just before his death, sad to report, he resorted to self-publishing on the internet. This included his trilogy of novels (written in the last months of his life) and the re-showing of all 1500 of his previously printed stories at a weblink address that will now, perforce, remain hidden to most of his few readers. This act of his seemed to be another ratchet beyond (or, rather, behind) his youthful ambitions. Yet, as a result, these first (and, now, of course, last) novels of his - at the age of 58 - are being read by some and, in a few cases, printed as a book by these readers.

He annoyed more than he pleased. And his views on fiction and Nemonymity were no exception to this.

Meanwhile, his death now makes me wonder how real a fictional situation needs to feel before it ceases to be (i) a fictional experience (as one would expect a fictional experience to be) and becomes (ii) a really real experience with all the drawbacks that real experiences often entail!

It's at that very cusp between (i) and (ii) where DF Lewis was trying to establish a magic base for Fiction, I feel. This related to his latterly expressed point regarding the state of antipodal angst kicking-in the older he became. Perhaps he felt the touch of death's own cusp.

In the last months, he still tried to make his fiction as real and nasty as possible, but that sometimes entailed him making it less real or nasty to prevent it blowing the readers' minds before they enjoyed the experience. Like the dynamite in LOST.

Feemy Fitzworth


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