Becoming An Author

Søren Kierkegaard, Prefaces & Writing Smapler, edt. & tr. Todd W. Nichol (Princeton University Press, 1997), VII., p. 35:

To write a book is the easiest of all things in our time, if, as is customary, one takes ten older works on the same subject and out of them puts together an eleventh on the same subject. In this way one gains the honor of being an author . . .

Kierkegaard does certainly have the wit; and, at quite numberless occasions, he can be genuinely jolly and humorous in such writings of his. But, God! he is so indulged in writing and then writing again, that much of it comes out as dispensable nonsense.