Friday 11 July 2003

Wilde on diaries and memory:
CECILY. I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down, I should probably forget all about them.

MISS PRISM. Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.

Wilde on three-volume novel, plaguing us even then:

CECILY. Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened, and couldn't possibly have happened. I believe that Memory is responsible for nearly all the three-volume novels that Mudie sends us.

MISS PRISM. Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.

CECILY. Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.

Wilde on what fiction means:

MISS PRISM. The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
Heh. The meaning of non-fiction, is, of course, beyond the scope of this weblog.
The Importance of Being Earnest

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