Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/185

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THE GOSPEL OF INFINITE PAINS

signed your name, did you say to your self, "Well, I suppose some of this is a bit ragged, but it will have to go as it is"? If the second is the case, then your collection of rejection slips deserves to multiply. You may be a genius, but you are not a craftsman. Better a hundred times the exaggeration, the hair-splittings, the reductio ad absurdum of Flaubert's Infinite Pains than such deliberate slovenliness. If you think that your lot is a hard one and that literature at best is a steady grind with slow results, read just one more paragraph on Flaubert's method and perhaps you will readjust your ideas.

One Sunday morning (writes Zola) we found him drowsy, broken with fatigue. The day before, in the afternoon, he had finished a page of Bouvard et Pécuchet, with which he felt very much pleased and he had gone to dine in town, after having copied it out on a large sheet of Hol-

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