I refer to this paragraph from the aforementioned novel Television, from which it is clear that the protagonist quite enjoys swimming as well as making love. He writes:
I rank swimming very highly among the pleasures that life has to offer us, having in the past somewhat underestimated it and placed it rather far behind physical love, which was until now my favorite activity, apart from thinking, of course. I do in fact very much like making love (on more than one account), and, without going into my own personal style in that domain, which is in any case closer to the sensual quietude of a leisurely breast-stroke pool length than to the surging, swaggering outburst of a four-hundred meter butterfly race, I will say above all that making love brings me an immense inner equilibrium, and that, the embrane at an end, as I lie dreamily on my back on the soft sheets, savoring the simple companionship of the moment, I find myself in an irrepressible good mood, which appears on my face as a slight, unexpected smile, and something gleaming in my eye, something light-hearted and knowing. And it turns out that swimming brings me the same sort of satisfaction, that same bodily plentiude, slowly spreading to the mind, like a wave, little by little, giving birth to a smile.Phew.. that was one sentence. Beautiful! Blaah then to V. S. Naipaul's #1 rule for writers: "Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than ten or twelve words."
That said, I agree that Naipaul has some important nuggets of advice but I quite like Vonnegut's wit and charm (as against Naipaul's acerbic petulance?) and so it is Vonnegut's 8 rules for writing that I will aim to adopt :)
By the way, both the above links about the rules of writing lead to India Uncut blog posts, where Amit Varma has a nice series of posts on the topic of writing: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
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