John Updike: Tedious Suburbanite or Literary Great?
What you do have to do, if you are assessing the first novel of a Southern author and weighing Faulkner’s influence, is to generate a provocative idea and throw it onto the page, where your readers can savor it. They may disagree with your point—that’s part of their intellectual fun. But they have enjoyed the turn of your mind and the journey that
... See moreWilliam Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Moral responsibility is the albatross around the artist’s neck.
Andrew Doyle • Free Speech And Why It Matters
Write For Yourself
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The aesthete doesn’t really ask whether something is good or bad but only whether it is interesting.
Timothy Keller • The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God
All of which raises another set of questions, about art rather than morals. Which is a better measure of an artwork, its quality on average or its peaks? How should ambition be weighed against execution, jolting insight against missteps, the good against the bad?