Joking Apart

Excerpt: Just to show the sort of thing one has to put up with in life, take the writing of this book as an instance. It was getting along splendidly. Chapter after chapter was piled up; the commonplaces of everyday life lay delicately unclothed upon the pages. All the neighbours?everybody?s neighbours?were there, pinned down like butterflies; their beauties and their bulgy eyes and their great nu...