“You are lazy, passive, concave, restless,” I would assure myself.  “Darcy’s astrology is right.  You are all water.  You have no earth and no fire, no ballast and no leap.  You just eddy and swirl and drip, seeking the lowest level, the minimum requirement.  Unless someone pushes you, or channels you, you’ll come to nothing.”   Robert Phelps, Heroes and Orators 54

Knausgaard vs St Aubyn, via Deleuze

St Aubyn has produced the (contemporary) classic about sadism for sadists, whereas Knausgaard’s classic is about masochism for masochists.  

At first glance, pretty simplistic, perhaps, but how well this would demonstrate Deleuze.  The essay published in English by MIT press in the edition of Venus in Furs.  There Deleuze argues that masochists and sadists live in entirely separate worlds.  Hence they would write literary works for separate reading audiences.  

Note how in interviews with these writers the one terms shows up, but not the other.  I just read the New Yorker piece on St Aubyn.  Lots of interviews with Knausgaard of late.