That gentlemanly thing one does when fighting isn’t in one’s nature perhaps. Maybe the fight actually was in Lean, I haven’t read his biographical deets. But seems to me like his character was such that he filed that piece of info away, experienced no cognitive dissonance from it, and shrugged sadly

Like, “Am I the best director to ever do it? Golly, I sure don’t feel I am. Pip pip, oh well.” As proud as I have been turning in copy here and there, the pride is that I finished it at all more so than in the substance of what I actually wrote. Not a sensation of futility, just a minor-key “meh.”