"I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this"
About this Quote
What Sandburg confesses here isn’t illness so much as dependence: the writer’s peculiar susceptibility to turning lived mess into art. “Infected” is a deliberately unbeautiful verb for a beautiful outcome. It frames creativity as something you catch, not something you virtuously choose - a compulsion that spreads once you’ve seen the payoff. The line’s sly punch is that the “infection” arrives “now that I see” the book taking shape; inspiration is less a lightning strike than the moment you realize chaos can be organized, sold, shelved, made to last.
The subtext is a little ruthless. Whatever “all this” contains - grief, labor struggle, poverty, disappointment, the daily abrasion of American life that Sandburg chronicled - is being metabolized into a “book,” an object that arrives clean and handsome, like a factory product. Sandburg doesn’t pretend that transformation is morally pure. He lets the reader hear the guilty thrill: suffering becomes material, and the success of the material makes you hungry for more. That’s the infection.
Context matters because Sandburg’s poetry and biographies are built from the vernacular and the grit of working people; he’s a poet of smoke, rail yards, city muscles. This line feels like an artist catching himself in the act of aestheticizing the very world he wants to honor. It’s both celebration and self-indictment: once you witness how “beautifully” the narrative assembles, you’re changed. You start scanning your own life for harvestable trouble, not because you’re heartless, but because the form demands it.
The subtext is a little ruthless. Whatever “all this” contains - grief, labor struggle, poverty, disappointment, the daily abrasion of American life that Sandburg chronicled - is being metabolized into a “book,” an object that arrives clean and handsome, like a factory product. Sandburg doesn’t pretend that transformation is morally pure. He lets the reader hear the guilty thrill: suffering becomes material, and the success of the material makes you hungry for more. That’s the infection.
Context matters because Sandburg’s poetry and biographies are built from the vernacular and the grit of working people; he’s a poet of smoke, rail yards, city muscles. This line feels like an artist catching himself in the act of aestheticizing the very world he wants to honor. It’s both celebration and self-indictment: once you witness how “beautifully” the narrative assembles, you’re changed. You start scanning your own life for harvestable trouble, not because you’re heartless, but because the form demands it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Book |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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