J.B. Priestley: 'Delight'

 I’ve recommended J.B. Priestley’s Delight a couple of times without giving an example of what makes it good. It’s time to make amends. Here’s an excerpt from “Cozy with Work”: 

In our younger days we writers — or composers or painters — like to talk a lot about work and what we are going to do, but we do not like actually working, which usually means removing ourselves from the company of other great souls and toiling away in solitude. This becomes easier as we get older, and once we are well into our professional middle age, instead of being reluctant we are often eager to disappear into our work and are angry when we are prevented from toiling in solitude. Indeed, I often feel delight now in merely surveying my desk and the rather pitiful implements of my craft (and here the painter has the advantage) laid out on that desk, all waiting for me. Typewriter, paper, pencils and erasers, notebooks, works of reference — they are all ready for me, those sensible old colleagues. Here is my own tiny world that I understand.

 

I like that picture because it delights me too.

Priestley’s little book consists of 110 short essays, which he calls “reflections,” on small things that delighted him. I think almost all of us should write such a book, although an essay, being shorter, might  be even better.

• Source: J.B. Priestley, Delight; New York: Harper & Row, 1949, p. 100.