Chapter 9, The Flaubert Apocrypha Summary

Geoffrey wonders whether the books that authors don't write matter. He thinks that it's easy to assume that the apocryphal bibliography must consist of bad ideas and abandoned projects. He thinks that ideas aren't always abandoned because they fail some test. The writer has an idea and then has to gather other ideas around this; sometimes there's too much and sometimes there's too little. Geoffrey imagines that perhaps the sweetest moment of writing is having an idea about a book that never has to be written or sullied with a definite shape.

Geoffrey goes through the apocryphal bibliography, starting with autobiography. Flaubert made references to writing an autobiography but he also announces his abandonment of the idea. He translated Candide into English, but with Flaubert's erratic use of English, this may have added an unintended element of...