Are We Savages Or What?

Biography Always Has Fulfiled This Role. Robinson Crusoe Is A Biography, As Is Tom Jones. You Can Go Through The Whole Range Of The Novel, And You Will Find It Is Biography. The Only Difference Between One Example And The Other Is That Sometimes It's A Partial Biography And Sometimes It's A Total Biography. Clarissa, For Example, Is A Partial Biography Of Clarissa And A Partial Biography Of Lovelace. In Other Words, It Doesn't Follow Lovelace From When He Is In The Cradle, Though It Takes Him To The Grave.

The World, That Understandable And Lawful World, Was Slipping Away.

Experimental Novels Are Sometimes Terribly Clever And Very Seldom Read. But The Story That Appeals To The Child Sitting On Your Knee Is The One That Satisfies The Curiosity We All Have About What Happened Then, And Then, And Then. This Is The Final Restriction Put On The Technique Of Telling A Story. A Basic Thing Called Story Is Built Into The Human Condition. It's What We Are; It's Something To Which We React.

Put Simply The Novel Stands Between Us And The Hardening Concept Of Statistical Man. There Is No Other Medium In Which We Can Live For So Long And So Intimately With A Character. That Is The Service A Novel Renders.

The Writer Probably Knows What He Meant When He Wrote A Book, But He Should Immediately Forget What He Meant When He's Written It.