Firstly, I should say that I do like Michael Palin. This is no sideswipe or snide gotcha at all, as I hope will become clear. I think, of the very many people who get accused of being National Treasures in Britain, he’s one of the few that might actually warrant it.
Certainly, as the man himself has proven in his many crissings and crossings of the Earth, it is constitutionally impossible to dislike him. Everywhere he goes, he seems quite organically to endear himself to all. If that were his only talent, it would be astonishing. As we know, he has many others.
One of those talents, perhaps his primary one, is writing. Yes, he is an estimable performer – an actor, presenter and comedian from if not the top shelf then not far below it. But he has a talent and ability with words, no less written than spoken, and he has clearly spent a lot of his life practising this art.
Much of that time was spent writing his famous diaries, which cover his life from the Monty Python period well into the current century. And of course, we are reminded of this annually on Greatest Diary Entry Ever Day, when once again his entry for Sunday November 13th 1977 goes viral, as it has a number of years running now.
It DOES sound like he had a really lovely Sunday. He evokes it beautifully, but as I said, he is an estimable writer, author of no less than a dozen best-selling travelogues (most of which he kindly allows people to read for free on his website – I told you he’s impossible to dislike.)
And then there’s the four volumes of diaries from which this gem has been unearthed. There’s also five children’s books (three of which he wrote in one year), three books of history, and a play. He’s even written three novels, one alongside fellow Python Terry Jones.
So I’ve got no doubt whatsoever that this diary entry is not merely beautiful and good, but also true, to apply Aquinas’s transcendentals. I have no doubt whatsoever that in November 1977, as he sat there with the scent of roasting beef in his nostrils and the wisps of smoke outside, Michael was indeed reading over an incomplete draft of a novel, and had worked out how he should complete it, and was eager to get on with it.
But. I am so sorry there’s a but. But there’s a but.
Michael Palin has, in his estimable and extensive list of published works, written three novels as I said. One of those, the Jones co-write, was published before 1977. The others, Hemingway’s Chair and The Truth, were published in 1995 and 2012 respectively.
You see where I’m going with this, presumably. Either that novel Michael was writing in November 1977 took at least another 18 years to complete and make it into print, or else it was never finished at all.
Is this enough to ruin a diary entry once described as epitomising ‘the beauty of enough’?
I hope not. In fact I hope it actually does more. I hope that in addition to inspiring people to appreciate what they have, and live in the moment, and practise gratitude for the small quotidian comforts, it might also act as a kind of warning.
Not everything works out, not even the things we feel filled with confidence about. But that doesn’t mean that they must lose all their value because of it.
We can apply this lesson to almost the whole gamut of our messy human existence, from love affairs even to the loss of loved ones, just as much as we can to Michael Palin’s missing novel.
Because in November 1977, the failure of that novel was still ahead of Michael. And the fact that it didn’t work out in the end in no way eradicates the joy it gave him while he was in the moment of appreciating how much he’d achieved of it and how far it had come.
Very arguably, his diary entry about that joy has gained greater traction, and been better appreciated and much more widely read than the book, if finished, could ever have been.