Irony - The Modern Mode: Either The

The Writer Must Be Universal In Sympathy And An Outcast By Nature: Only Then Can He See Clearly.

Discovering, For Example, That As Witnesses To Your Life Diminish, There Is Less Corroboration, And Therefore Less Certainty, As To What You Are Or Have Been. [p. 65]

But That’s One Advantage Of Fiction, You Can Speed Up Time.

How Often Do We Tell Our Own Life Story? How Often Do We Adjust, Embellish, Make Sly Cuts? And The Longer Life Goes On, The Fewer Are Those Around To Challenge Our Account, To Remind Us That Our Life Is Not Our Life, Merely The Story We Have Told About Our Life. Told To Others, But — Mainly — To Ourselves.

He Thought Of Trying To Explain Something He Had Recently Noticed About Himself: That If Anyone Insulted Him, Or One Of His Friends, He Didn't Really Mind--or Not Much, Anyway. Whereas If Anyone Insulted A Novel, A Story, A Poem That He Loved, Something Visceral And Volcanic Occurred Within Him. He Wasn't Sure What This Might Mean--except Perhaps That He Had Got Life And Art Mixed Up, Back To Front, Upside Down.