Foreign countries

From page 257 of The Line of Beauty:

"[...] but it was only play-acting, the capable new persona that came with speaking in a foreign language."

Replace "language" with "accent", and you have the subject of my novel. I don't know whether to be disheartened; is it bad that the best novelist in the world can summarize my novel-in-progress in a single sentence? Does it mean that he has already explored the subject in countless unpublished novels, and found it an unrewarding one, about which nothing worthwhile can be said?

But surely this is too pessimistic. Maybe I can take it to mean, instead, that I am on the "right" track. It's almost as if Hollinghurst were my research advisor, and can only suggest research topics, i.e., subjects for my novel, by alluding obliquely to them in his own novels. I imagine us in an office together, sitting across the table from each other, he with his beard and the suggestive smile he wears on the dust flap of The Line of Beauty, me with a backpack, not bothering to conceal my lack of sleep. "Don't you think Wani 's saying 'Now there's a line of beauty for you!" is a little too legible? " I'll say. And he'll say "Don't quote bloody James Wood at me. "Legible"! Now don't let me see you until you've read my Bajazet translation."