I think Alain de Botton has made me see it. you're longing to noticed
and read in all you write. the problem is your writing has no
privacy; therefore you censor yourself with the imagined impressions
of others. nothing can be more damaging to maintaining the live vivid
connection. your darkest ugliest thoughts, your most giddy exuberant
observations of beauty–all get shorn off in this process. I think
it's a kind of strangulation of art and insight. There has to be a
way to write, easily and from anywhere, that will collect and protect
the work while not simultaneously purveying it to the world. God but
this observations rings true, as does his insights into Proust's
attitude toward friendships, toward speaking of onesself to others, to
revising one's thoughts–the compression of time and revision in the
creation of the author's voice, to the fidelity toward books, writing,
expression. how proust can change your life indeed; how this book can.