I can't be alone among fiction writers in regarding the world, so much weirder than anything we could make up, as beating us at our own game or in racking my brains over what could possibly constitute a contribution when novels pale before the newspaper.
Interpretation
Reality often surpasses fiction, challenging writers to find significance in their fictional creations.
In this quote, Lionel Shriver expresses a sense of awe and humility regarding the complexities of the real world compared to the narratives that writers create. She suggests that reality's intricacies can render fictional stories pale in comparison, leading to a struggle for writers to find their place and contribution in a world filled with unpredictable and sometimes bizarre real-life events that fiction cannot adequately embody or explain.
In practice
During a writer's workshop, discussing this quote can inspire participants to tap into real-life experiences for their narratives.
Yet if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation; the displacements amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring.
For pity's sake, if you don't take a shine to a novel, there are loads more in the world; read something else. Continue suffering, and it's not the author's fault. It's yours.
In my country, we're sufficiently consumed by the concept of happiness that the right to its pursuit is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. But what is happiness?
You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.
In the big picture I write for an audience of people I've never met. By the final draft I'm looking for anything in the prose that's prospectively boring to strangers.
Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story.
On Painting Rats, and the Glorification of Them. They exist without permission. They are hated, hunted and persecuted. They live in quiet desperation amongst the filth. And yet they are capable of bringing entire civilizations to their knees. If you are dirty, insignificant, and unloved then rats are the ultimate role model.
The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.
Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling.
That is the artist's job: take mineral rock from dark silent earth, transform it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.
Miller didn't write Death of a Salesman. He released it. It was there inside him, waiting to be turned loose. That's the measure of its merit.
Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.