flaubert loved to read aloud. it took him thirty-two hours to read his overblown lyrical fantasia, the tempatation of saint anthony, to two friends. and when he dined in
*though one wonders if a great deal of time was not spent just sleeping and masturbating (flaubert likened sentences to ejaculate). often, the excruciation of the stylist seems to be a front for writer’s block. this was the case with the marvelous american writer jf powers, for instance, of whom sean o’faolain joked, in wildean fashion, that he “spent the morning putting in a comma and the afternoon wondering whether or not he should replace it with a semicolon.” more usual, i think, is the kind of literary routine ascribed to the minor english writer ac benson—that he did nothing all morning and then spent the afternoon writing up what he’d done in the morning.
1 comment:
i like to masturbate with a comma in my semicolon.
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