Reading 5

“A large part of understanding something is finding analogies for it. What is it like? What other situation does it resemble? For me, being who I am, the analogies that come to mind are most often from things I’ve read.”

- James Lasdun, Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked (2013)

“There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us.”

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

“‘You provide desolation,’ wrote George Sand, ‘and I provide consolation.’ To which Flaubert replied, ‘I cannot change my eyes.’ The work of art is a pyramid which stands in the desert, uselessly: jackals piss at the base of it, and bourgeois clamber to the top of it. […] Do you want art to be a healer? Send for the AMBULANCE GEORGE SAND. Do you want art to tell the truth? Send for the AMBULANCE FLAUBERT: though don’t be surprised, when it arrives, if it runs over your leg. Listen to Auden: ‘Poetry makes nothing happen.’ Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence. Art is not a brassière. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassière is the French for life-jacket.”

- Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot (1984)