I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.
Interpretation
A novelist's role is to represent unique, unheard experiences.
In this quote, Donna Tartt emphasizes the importance of novelists as voices for marginalized or overlooked experiences in society. By positioning themselves at the fringes, writers can bring to light stories that resonate with those who feel unseen, creating a richer tapestry of human experience and understanding through literature.
In practice
During a book club meeting discussing the influence of literature on society.
Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.
Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?
But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.
And the flavor of Pippa's kiss--bittersweet and strange--stayed with me all the way back uptown, swaying and sleepy as I sailed home on the bus, melting with sorrow and loveliness, a starry ache that lifted me up above the windswept city like a kite: my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky.
Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?
I've written only two novels, but they're both long ones, and they each took a decade to write.
You want to make money, remake 'Cinderella.' You want to move people, remake the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth.
I wanted to use what I was, to be what I was born to be - not to have a 'career', but to be that straightforward obvious unmistakable animal, a writer.
Great art picks up where nature ends.
These designers have no reserve. They've chosen a path and thrown themselves onto it head first, regardless of everything. Whether or not their designs are sellable or vulgar. As long as it's new and people talk about it. That is the truth.
You know, sound was still a fairly new thing when I came into movies. And the reason musicals happened is because of sound. They could put music in the picture! That's how it all began.
Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul.
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