Chapter 9

I find the very beginning of chapter 9 to be quite interesting, in that, the statements made are so negative. "It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down. It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses. It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist." Why is this negativity to the start of the chapter? It shows that everything can be thought off and dreamed of but cannot be made a reality without that actual step of creating it. "...Perhaps the sweetest moment in writing is the arrival of that idea for a book which never has to be written, which is never sullied with a definite shape, which never needs to be exposed to a less loving gaze than that of the author." Why is this such a sweet feeling? I dont quite understand this statement, it doesn't make sense to me. The ideas and analogies used in this chapter are very enticing. For example, "If you cut a flatworm in half, the head will grow a new tail; more surprisingly, the tail will grow a new head." This is a pretty neat way of saying something simple to contrast something else. He uses this analogy to talk about the "regretted ending of L'Education sentimentale..." The way things are discussed in this chapter is overall pretty cool.