Stephen Clarke about
Talk to the Snail
I’d been playing around with the idea for Talk to the Snail for a while, and had started giving talks about
living in France that I divided up into ‘commandments’. They were rather long
commandments, I seem to remember, along the lines of ‘if you go to Paris, don’t
assume that just because the drivers refuse to stop at red lights and try to
run you over, that they hate you personally’.
I’d then tell a few traffic-related anecdotes. I had several similar
commandments, all of which inspired a bunch of anecdotes, and I found I could
keep this up for ages. So I started writing it down, and shortened the
commandments to things like ‘thou shalt[1]
not love thy neighbour’ and ‘thou shalt not work’. I still couldn’t cram the
French into just ten commandments, though. They’re much too complicated for
that.
Even though I was forced to do eleven commandments, writing the book was a blast, because I was given complete freedom by the publishers.
I also wrote an index that is genuinely helpful, but also a joke in itself, full of references like ‘Alcohol, see Driving’, ‘Restaurant, see Bacteria’, and ‘Weekends, long, frequency of’.
Even though I was forced to do eleven commandments, writing the book was a blast, because I was given complete freedom by the publishers.
I also wrote an index that is genuinely helpful, but also a joke in itself, full of references like ‘Alcohol, see Driving’, ‘Restaurant, see Bacteria’, and ‘Weekends, long, frequency of’.
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