Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the influence of education on American novelists can be more detrimental to their creativity than alcohol.
Gore Vidal's quote highlights a provocative perspective on the impact of formal education, specifically in the field of writing. It implies that the conventional teaching methods and structures associated with literature can stifle originality and creativity, ultimately hindering the development of the novelist's voice and perspective. Instead of fostering free thought and innovation, education may impose constraints that can limit artistic expression, comparable to the effects of excessive drinking.
In practice
Using this quote at a writer's workshop to encourage participants to think outside the box.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
Reading is performance. The reader--the child under the blanket with a flashlight, the woman at the kitchen table, the man at the library desk--performs the work. The performance is silent. The readers hear the sounds of the words and the beat of the sentences only in their inner ear. Silent drummers on noiseless drums. An amazing performance in an amazing theater.
Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas.
The only way you can invent tomorrow is if you break out of the enclosure that the school system has provided for you by the exams written by people who are trained in another generation.
Writing simply means no dependent clauses, no dangling things, no flashbacks, and keeping the subject near the predicate. We throw in as many fresh words we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don't always work. You have to do tricks with pacing, alternate long sentences with short, to keep it vital and alive.... Virtually every page is a cliffhanger--you've got to force them to turn it."~
Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.