A life-long commitment to writing involves a balancing of these incompatible needs. For every self-revelation, there has to be a self-concealment. There is only so much revealing one can do. Others play games of concealment and avowal, as I am, no doubt, playing with you. Kafka said: “Conversation takes the importance, the seriousness, the truth out of everything I think.” I would guess that most writers are suspicious of conversation, of what goes out in the ordinary uses of language. One has to be at different stages of conception and execution, in a state of extreme alertness and consciousness and in a state of great naivete and ignorance, Although this is probably true of the practice of any art, it may be more true of writing because the writer-unlike the painter or composer-works in a medium that one employs all the time, throughout one’s waking life. I will only be the second kind of writer. Homer + Tolstoy like figurative painting-try to represent a world with sublime charity, beyond judgment. One is either an outside (Homer, Tolstoy) or an inside (Kafka) writer. –from Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 Sane me, critics, correct them-but their sanity is parasitic on the creative faculty of genius. Good writers are roaring egotists, even to the point of fatuity. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up. I’m interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. I’m glad to be free of the kind of one-note depressiveness that is so characteristic of contemporary fiction. On carving out a place in contemporary fiction: –from Sontag’s “At the Same Time: The Novelist and Moral Reasoning” They educate our capacity for moral judgement. The stories they tell enlarge and complicate-and, therefore, improve-our sympathies. They evoke our common humanity in narratives with which we can identify, even though the lives may be remote from our own. Serious fiction writers think about moral problems practically. This doesn’t entail moralizing in any direct or crude sense. Obviously, I think of the writer of novels and stories and plays as a moral agent. –from Sontag’s 2003 commencement speech at Vassar Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. –from As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980ĭo stuff. Have moral intelligence-which creates true authority in a writer Know everything about adjectives and punctuation (rhythm) – from Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 1 supplies the material 2 lets it come out 3 is taste 4 is intelligence.Ī great writer has all 4-but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2 they’re most important.
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