Reflections of a working writer and reader
Good books write themselves, and this can be said from a small but successful book like Ripley to longer and greater works of literature. If the writer thinks about his material long enough, until it becomes a part of his mind and his life, and he goes to bed and wakes up thinking about it - then at last when he starts to work, it will flow out as if by itself. A writer should feel geared to his book during the time he is writing it, whether that takes six weeks, six months, a year or more. It is wonderful the way bits of information, faces, names, anecdotes, all kinds of impressions that come in from the outside world during the writing period, will be usable in the book, if one is in tune with the book and its needs. Is the writer attracting the right things, or is some process keeping out the wrong ones? Probably it's a mixture of both. Patricia Highsmith
The Guardian has brought a few critics and writers together to give their opinions. Some interesting comments . . .
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Yes, the comments are very revealing, often of the authors themselves.
jb says: Agreed. I particularly like Louise Doughty’s closing remark:
In the end it is not for us to identify the great writers. We don’t have any sense of perspective. Kafka published virtually nothing in his lifetime, while Pearl S Buck won the Nobel prize for literature.
Dear John,
The interesting thing is that most of the contributors either mention Amis in a positive or negative way, so one way or another, he has had an impact on their reading lives.
It’s almost like going out with a girl and all she wants to do is talk about her ex… well, you get the idea
jb says: Hi Geoffrey. Amis is like that. There is no doubt whatsoever that he was a prodigious and precocious talent. This probably led to overblown or unreal expectations, something that the media, generally, find inexcusable.
JB, I didn’t know that about Kafka. Makes you think…
jb says: There are other examples, I believe. Several poets, lots of women . . .
And Proust had to pay to have his first volume of Remembrance of Things Past published, I’ve just learned.
jb says: The inheritance allowed him to write.