the déjà-ecrit

We all have experienced déjà-vu. But what writer has not experienced, as well, déjà-ecrit - the feeling that the thing one is writing has been written before, must have been written before. It is the feeling that reading what you have writen precedes what you have written - and if you have read it, it must have been written by someone somewhere. Going for the gusto, here, I'd guess that the best things - or many of the best things - are written with this eerie feeling. It is a wobble in the author’s authority, for neither the writer nor anyone that the writer knows wrote the sentence, exactly. mene, tekel, upharsin, baby.