{"id":202,"date":"2018-12-23T18:43:24","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T18:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=202"},"modified":"2018-12-23T18:43:24","modified_gmt":"2018-12-23T18:43:24","slug":"on-living-reading-writing-and-acrasia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2018\/12\/23\/on-living-reading-writing-and-acrasia\/","title":{"rendered":"On living, reading, writing and acrasia"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Proust describes Swann<\/a> as lazy in his scholarly work, as one who is more interested in life itself than in reading or writing. Swann found an excuse for his laziness in “the idea that ‘Life’ contains situations more interesting and more romantic than all the romances ever written.” Swann had “acquired the habit of finding life interesting–of marveling at the strange discoveries that there were to be made in it.” (SW, Swann In Love) <\/p>\n

Proust often reproached himself for not sitting down at his desk and working. Proust probably used the same excuse for his laziness that Swann used–life is more interesting than books. Proust wasn’t the only writer to believe that life is more interesting than books; “from life”, said Kafka, “one can extract comparatively so many books, but from books so little, so very little, life.” (Conversations With Kafka, by G. Janouch)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/i>For the writer maybe, but for the reader?<\/p>\n

And can one have the will (or wherewithal) to write without first having had it to read?<\/p>\n

So, for a writer, laziness in reading is more unpardonable (and limiting) than laziness in writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Proust describes Swann as lazy in his scholarly work, as one who is more interested in life itself than in reading or writing. Swann found an excuse for his laziness in “the idea that ‘Life’ contains situations more interesting and more romantic than all the romances ever written.” Swann had “acquired the habit of finding … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “On living, reading, writing and acrasia”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}