"Don't write, Ralph. You'll bring shame on your family." - Hunter S Thompson
So I don't. Or wouldn't, were it not for the fact that I write better than he gives me credit for. Hunter is jealous of anyone who writes with some aptitude. I had just declared that I was going to write a book rather than merely illustrate one. "Write?" he continued. "You've got nothing to write about, Ralph!" Which is true. "Then I'll write fiction," I replied. "Wouldn't you say that writing fiction is a kind of sanctioned lying?" "Very clever, Ralph. You are the best liar I ever met. You'll do well!"
I get my inspiration in the swimming pool, mostly. I swim every morning and evening outdoors, rain or shine. I get my best ideas in a thunderstorm - the power and majesty of nature on my side. But by the time I am out of the pool, I have forgotten most of what I wanted to say, and how I wanted to say it. My mind, perceptive as it is, knows that I am trying to capture its fickle muse; so it shuts like a clam.
Instead, the spectre of my English teacher, Miss Davis, rises up and tortures me with the thought she planted like a limpet mine on the steel prow of my mind - below the water line, too - all those years ago. "Writing is pain," she said. "You are not here to enjoy my classes and find a playful joy in words. I am not enjoying this, so why should you?"
I think that is what she said, but maybe I am lying. Memory plays funny tricks; it caresses one's own prejudice. Probably my hatred of English classes was my own lazy fault. Nevertheless, I have constructed a kind of autobiography, Doodaaa; The Balletic Art of Gavin Twinge, which I wrote about someone else, my alter ego, Gavin Twinge, while I, the writer, am somebody else too, distancing myself from the subject, and even the distasteful act of writing. I invented a "biographer", Ralphael Steed. I merely oversee the result of the torture and add the coup de grace - a Preface. I called it a Tri-ography. Big mistake! There are no shelves for tri-ographies in the bookstores.
From this perch I have devised, I can view the plot, the action, the philosophy, and the confused lying. I am not a writer. I am an artist and have no right buggering about with verbs and split infinitives, which is what being a writer says to me. Don't get me wrong. This is not sour grapes. I have even written a book about wine - The Grapes of Ralph. The critics were very kind and I won a prize for my efforts. I have done a book about the life of Leonardo da Vinci, which also won a prize. But I struggled with it until l decided to imagine that I was Leonardo. Immediately, I was free! I could tell you what it felt like to think like him. No art critic could fault it, because I had to know how I felt, didn't I?
It was the perfect conceit and I felt Leonardo's innate modesty and natural curiosity about life's mysteries. I could paint the Last Supper, which I did, one third full size, on the master bedroom wall. It is still there. Which is more than can be said for the original in Santa Maria della Grazie. I wrote the words in pencil on the back of each drawing I did for the book. This kept me harnessed to the subject.
Writing a biography of Sigmund Freud, I went to Freud's house in Vienna, gained access to his first ever consulting room and lay down right where the famous consulting couch used to be. I was a patient and Professor Freud loomed over me, and my eyeline saw what a patient saw - the ceiling, the corner of the room, the cobwebs, and even the wallpaper, which was still there.
These days I am loath to "illustrate" other people's prose. Such a lot of it, as I have discovered for myself, is not much more than shameless self-indulgence. I have however recently completed the drawings for a 50th-anniversary limited edition of Ray Bradbury's classic, Fahrenheit 451, because of its vitally important theme - the burning of all books. Exactly 451 of them, signed by Ray and me.
As someone once said, I think it was me: there is nothing so dangerous as an idea. Particularly one whose time has come...
· Ralph Steadman's Doodaaa is published by Bloomsbury at £8.99
