(Another blog made up of quotes. Well, I still don’t have a computer and it’s unsurprisingly difficult to write a long analysis on a keyboard the size of a postage stamp. So tough titty.)
Well, it’s more Naipaul clips today – showing him at his best, I think, as is appropriate for one writing of the recently dead.
(I’ve mucked the quotes about a bit for continuity).
I continued to fret over the idea of fiction as something made up. Fiction as something artificial would not be good enough. Fiction has a serious job to do, it must elucidate a situation. If there’s no situation to elucidate, I wouldn’t write. I wouldn’t do the work. I hate the idea of narrative just for the sake of narrative.
Writing is what one lives for. My idea of bliss is to be in the middle of a work which you know is good, to write well all day, and to go to a dinner party in the evening, and have nice wine.
I think Proust was right: the self that writes the books is the most secret and deepest. One doesn’t understand that. It isn’t a self that is revealed in the letters one wrote to a publisher or something. All that’s external. It’s a mystery. It can’t be explained. This is true of all creative people
Print them out and use them as wallpaper, so that every day you see them and are a little closer to the light.