There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.

Summary

The quote expresses the aversion towards the literary world and its pursuits. The act of creating literature, described as constructing castles on fragile cobwebs, seems futile and transient. The constant struggle to achieve significance is deemed as an embittered endeavor, highlighting the inevitability of one's work being forgotten with fleeting time. This dissatisfaction is heightened by the jarring contrast between failure, often lingering in the atmosphere of the literary realm, and the shallow allure of mainstream success, which is seen as both gaudy and repellant.

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