You got to give it up

An interesting sentence in this review by Julian Barnes of a recently published volume of some of Flaubert’s correspondence and journals:

Three years before Madame Bovary appeared, [Flaubert] bade farewell . . . to “the personal, the intimate, to everything connected with me”. His “old project” of one day writing his memoirs was now officially abandoned: “Nothing personal tempts me any more”.

An interesting move to contemplate, especially if one has semi-entertained the notion of writing one’s memoirs (and thinking that that would be the best way to say what one has to say.)

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