If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.
Interpretation
Life involves moving from ignorance to understanding, and writing allows us to share that journey.
In this quote, Jane Smiley reflects on the nature of life as a constant journey of growth and learning, suggesting that as we move from foolishness to wisdom, we also gain insights that are worth sharing. Writing novels becomes a means to communicate these experiences, illustrating the different phases of our understanding and the wisdom we acquire along the way.
In practice
Using this quote in a writing workshop to inspire authors sharing their personal journeys.
I say, when your hair turns gray and your children think they know who you are, do the thing that shakes up who you think you are, even who you had prided yourself on being. When all those around you say they simply don't recognize you any longer, that's the real compliment.
When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.
Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.
When I went to first grade and the other children said that their fathers were farmers, I simply didn't believe them. I agreed in order to be polite, but in my heart I knew that those men were impostors, as farmers and as fathers, too. In my youthful estimation, Laurence Cook defined both categories. To really believe that others even existed in either category was to break the First Commandment.
I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.
Somehow, knowing that Alzheimer's is coming mocks all one's aspirations - to tell stories, to think through certain issues as only a novel can do, to be recognised for one's accomplishments and hard work - in a way that old familiar death does not.
Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more.
If something's going to happen for you, it will, you can't make it happen. And it never does happen until you're past the point where you care whether it happens or not. I guess it's for our own good that it always happens that way, because after you stop wanting things is when having them won't make you go crazy.
When the enemy's envoy's speak in humble terms, but continues his preparations, he will advance. When their language is deceptive but the enemy pretentiously advances, he will retreat. When the envoys speak in apologetic terms, he wishes a respite. When without a previous understanding the enemy asks for a truce, he is plotting. When the enemy sees an advantage but does not advance to seize it, he is fatigued.
You entertain people who are satisfied. Hungry people can't be entertained - or people who are afraid. You can't entertain a man who has no food.
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that men never learn anything from history.
Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, but genius must be born; and never can be taught.
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