Eli Burnstein’s latest book Phrased and Confused: The World's Great Quotations and What They (Really) Mean (Profile) is a guide to the great quotations that people keep getting wrong, from 'seize the day' to 'the road less travelled'. It also explores the meanings of famously difficult ones, from 'I think therefore I am' to 'a rose is a rose is a rose'.
Eli’s book launch takes place at Stoke Newington Books on 8 October.
What gave you the idea for your book?
I’m a sucker for a good quote, and after years of collecting them, I started noticing that the lines I loved the best were, paradoxically, the ones I understood the least. Lines like ‘In the beginning was the Word’ or ‘A rose is a rose is a rose’. So I thought it would be fun to write a book about these enigmatic phrases and what they’re all about.
How long did it take to write?
At first I thought it would take me about six or seven months, but once I got started it dawned on me that I’d essentially signed up to write several dozen university papers – one for each line. So it ended up taking about a year.
Which writers or artists were inspiring you while you wrote?
That’s easy: the writers and artists whose quotes I was writing about. Writers like Simone Weil, for example, with her idea of ‘Attention as a form of prayer,’ or the poet William Blake, with his belief that ‘The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom’. Spending time in these figures’ heads was hugely rewarding.
What do you tell yourself when the going gets tough?
Occasionally I manage to soothe myself with the thought that ‘it’ll get done because it has to’, treating the publisher’s deadline as a kind of pencils down moment. Other times, that line of thinking doesn’t do the trick and I panic.
How much do you revise?
More than is good for me, I suspect. I know you’re supposed to let things go, but I’m an incorrigible tinkerer. Even after I’ve submitted the manuscript – even after the thing is published, in fact – I’ll keep thinking of clearer or sharper or otherwise better ways of phrasing things, from individual word choices all the way up to chapter structure. In those moments, I have to remind myself to hold back and direct that energy into the next project.
How did you first get published?
I started submitting humour to McSweeney’s and The New Yorker until eventually I broke through. After a few years of writing for these and similar outlets, I was approached by a publisher, who asked me to keep them in mind if I ever wanted to try something book-length – a nice email to get! (Of all pieces, the one that seemed to get their attention was a listicle called ‘Text Messages from My Mother After I Publish a Single Article Online’.) After chatting with the publisher for a bit, they kindly introduced me to an agent. I shared a few of my ideas with her (the agent I mean) until she encouraged me to write one up into a proposal. That eventually became my first book, Dictionary of Fine Distinctions.
What’s the last really good book you read?
I really enjoyed The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. It’s a slim, funny novel about poetry and procrastination. The book manages to be witty and light but also tender and a bit sad.
What’s a book more people should read?
It’s an extremely boring thing to say – a bit like ‘The Beatles are underrated’ or something like that – but Anna Karenina is so unbelievably good that I think everyone should read it. And if you’ve done that already, check out his short stories ‘Master and Man’ and ‘Two Hussars’. And if you’ve read those too, I really love a short story called ‘The Open Boat’ by Stephen Crane.
Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
Train your ear, not your brain. More than any ‘reason’ a piece of writing works or doesn’t work, it simply has to sound right. The meaning of a sentence and its music are wedded in a way I don’t fully understand but that I’m totally convinced of. So when a voice in your head goes ‘mmm, that’s not sounding right,’ don’t explain that feeling away with arguments about how what you’ve got already works, but keep playing around with it until that voice goes quiet.
Favourite place in London?
I like working at the Barbican library. It’s not always easy to find a socket, and the bathrooms are weirdly far away, but it’s a good place to get into the swing of things, and there’s no better place for lunch than down by the water.