Work and fame

One piece of advice:

“Work, achieve renown,” he said to me.

That’s Charles Morel, violinist, speaking to the narrator of In Search of Lost Time, who’s said that he finally wants to get to the work of writing. “Who’s that from?” the narrator asks. “From Fontanes, to Chateaubriand.”

Another piece of advice:

Work your ass off to change the language & dont ever get famous.

That’s from “Experiments,” a list of writing practices compiled by Bernadette Mayer and members of a St. Mark’s Church Poetry Workshop.

Sources: Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah, trans. John Sturrock (New York: Penguin, 2005). Bernadette Mayer et al., “Experiments,” in In the American Tree, ed. Ron Silliman (Orono, ME: National Poetry Foundation, 1986).

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[Translator’s note: “‘Work, work, my dear friend, achieve renown.’ Chateaubriand cites the words as having been written to him in 1798, by the Marquis Louis de Fontanes (1757–1821), a mediocre writer with whom he had become friendly during his exile in England.”]