The poet Philippe Soupault used to write in a café next to his house. One morning he noticed a little man across from him, studiously observing him as he wrote. After some time, Soupault, irritated by the unwanted attention, burst out, ‘Why are you watching me like that?’ To which the little man answered, ‘I want to know how it’s done.’ That is perhaps the nagging question behind our prurient interest in the lives of artists and writers: we want to know how it’s done. Kipling called the labours to satisfy this curiosity ‘higher cannibalism’.
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