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unearths some literary gems.
From Conversations with Julian Barnes:
***"I was getting obsessed about being obsessed with obsessions."***INTERVIEWER: I wonder if we can't see the ghost of a parrot flapping through Staring at the Sun....BARNES: No, I wasn't reminded of Parrot, not at all.[I love that JB refers to his novel Flaubert's Parrot as simply "Parrot," along the lines of "Catcher" or "Streetcar."]***[Barnes mimics the tenor of Continental literary theory.]"In the tenth book of dialogues by Jean-Michel Whoever, the proposition is put forward that..."***[Regarding his time working for the OED.]"I spent three professional years with the language post-1880, in letters C to G. I doubt it shows through in my fiction."***"I don't feel, to put it crudely, that because I've written Flaubert's Parrot I have to write 'Tolstoy's Gerbil.'"***INTERVIEWER: And yet I feel that sometimes you do confuse the reader....BARNES: I only confuse the academic reader.***INTERVIEWER (Xesus Fraga): A novel is like a clock, you just see the time going by, but not the mechanism, the book's structure.***[This bit is from JB's journal, prior to his actually writing "Parrot"; and I don't think "inner sense of parrothood" made it into the novel!]"The bright-green perky-eyed parrot...which irritated him at the same time...as giving him an inner sense of parrothood."***
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