Sometimes it's best to speak from ignorance: that way, you can see the wood without being distracted by the trees.
Howard JacobsonRead
For a lot of readers these days, a book is something you have to agree or disagree with. But you can't agree with a novel. For my generation, it was assumed that a book is a dramatic thing, that the eye of the book is not telling you what to think.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Books, especially novels, are meant to evoke feelings and thoughts rather than demand agreement or disagreement.
This quote by Howard Jacobson highlights the difference in how readers engage with literature across generations. It emphasizes that a novel should be perceived as a medium that stimulates thought and emotional response rather than a rigid argument that requires the reader to take a side. In an age where many approach reading with a dichotomous mindset of agreement or disagreement, Jacobson advocates for a deeper, more nuanced appreciation of the narrative and its emotional complexity.
Themes
BooksNovelsReadingLiteratureEmotionsEngagement
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club discussion about character development in novels.
More from Howard Jacobson
All quotes →I think one of the main reasons I write is to do better than ranting. The ranting is the opinion, and the writing is not the opinion. I always say that people's opinions are the worst things about them. The words demand a dignity.
Howard JacobsonRead
How do you explain to somebody who doesn't understand that you don't build a library to read. A library is a resource. Something you go to, for reference, as and when. But also something you simply look at, because it gives you succour, answers to some idea of who you are or, more to the point, who you would like to be, who you will be once you own every book you need to own.
Howard JacobsonRead
It is no judgement of a thing outside yourself to say it makes you ill. The wise reader knows that every pronouncement is, to some degree, an act of self-exposure; the book you find too challenging might only show how ill-equipped you are to face its challenge.
Howard JacobsonRead
In my experience, every book you write changes the conditions in which you write the next.
Howard JacobsonRead
It isn't only in the name of free speech that the views of an itchy polemicist should be tolerated - and I say itchy polemicist promoting thought, not itchy ideologue promoting violence - but because provocation is indispensable to the workings of a sound, creative culture.
Howard JacobsonRead
Similar quotes
I sent The World Well Lost to one editor who rejected it on sight, and then wrote a letter to every other editor in the field warning them against the story, and urging them to reject it on sight without reading it.
Theodore SturgeonRead
My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, “All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.’” She raised me up to be a Southern writer, but it wasn’t easy.
Pat ConroyRead
My last vivid boyhood fright from books came when I was 15; I was visiting my uncle and aunt in Greenwich, and, emboldened by my success with 'The Waste Land,' I opened their copy of 'Ulysses.' The whiff of death off those remorseless, closely written pages overpowered me. So: back to soluble mysteries, and jokes that were not cosmic.
John UpdikeRead
I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit.
Stephen KingRead
Sometimes, there can be a slightly condescending assumption that anything unlikable about a female character is a mistake, as if they're a contestant in a beauty pageant and have to seem charming and upbeat all the time.
Curtis SittenfeldRead
In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer. [dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]
Arthur C. ClarkeRead