Dear America,
The Queen of England has one small request to make. Please take heed and realise, we could care less about your odd pronunciations, but do try to at least make sense.
Love,
David Mitchell. Comic Genius.
“There are those who say that life is like a book, with chapters for each event in your life and a limited number of pages on which you can spend your time. But I prefer to think that a book is like a life, particularly a good one, which is well to worth staying up all night to finish.” ― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid
Do you really want to live like this? |
[He has] established himself as one of the strangest, most vivid critical characters on the scene. He’s been, by now, pretty much universally acknowledged—grudgingly, fawningly, eagerly, nervously, warningly, or mockingly, depending on which journals you subscribe to—as the best book critic currently classing up the back end of America’s magazines.
If one were [ask]ing, “Well what is Wood’s taste based on?”—a certain level of intellectualism. Certainly verbal exuberance and complexity. Updike. Bellow. Roth, too. A certain love of voice.So yes, I would want to appeal, in some way to what he demands of his favourite writers and adhere in part to the style of those novels he praised. This choice though is not to do with him - it is to do with my own preference. I like what he likes. He's written the things that I want to say when I can't find the words. Don't try and fit the critic, fellow Scribblers. Seek a critic that fits you - find one, love them and take what they offer to heart. If you admire someone but realise that your novel is the epitome of all that they loathe, either respect your different values or use the techniques that apply to your work and only use those. Your style is your own, let yourself grow into it by interfusing it with ideas from those you admire. Accept criticism, accept that not everyone will favour you and that you cannot appeal to everyone, and lastly: keep learning. You can never have too much craft.
Lemony Snicket - Will You Ever See His Face? |
"Music tones and rhythms were used by our half-human ancestors, during the season of courtship, when animals of all kinds are excited not only by love, but by strong passions of jealousy, rivalry, and triumph” and that speech arose, secondarily, from this primal music.This could be true, or it could be mere 'speculation' as Sacks suggests. What is key is that music, for many, is a thread that binds them to emotion, ties them to humanity, reminds them of life or reflects the Beautiful. It inspires, moves, remedies, offers support or conjures a spectre of some dimly remembered history. It is no wonder then, that so much of art is inspired by music.
God is necessary, and so must exist.But I know that He doesn’t exist and can’t exist.But don’t you understand that a man with two such ideas cannot go on living?
Is there no man on this planet who, having finished with God and believing in his own will, will have enough courage to express his self-will in its most important point? […] All man did was to invent God so as to live without killing himself. That’s the essence of universal history till now. I am the only man in universal history who for the first time refused to invent God. […] To realize that there is no god and not to realize at the same instant that you have become god yourself – is an absurdity, for else you would certainly kill yourself. If you do realize it, you are a king and will never kill yourself, but will live in the greatest glory. But he who is first to realize it is bound to kill himself, for otherwise who will begin and prove it? […] I am still only a god against my will, and I am unhappy because I am bound to express my self-will. […] Fear is the curse of mankind. But I shall proclaim my self-will. I am bound to believe that I do not believe. I shall begin and end, and open the door.He feels that he MUST 'open the door', that in order for any to realise their freedom to act as they will, he must prove it so. There is much more to be said of these passages and of Kirilov but I want to focus on that idea of necessity. Kirilov is a symbolic figure in the novel but he is endlessly interpretable. We see him as he does, 'absurd' in his actions and suicide; we see him as committing a 'Christian suicide'; we see him as an opposite to characters such as Shatov as Orthodox Russians; we see him as a representative of political thought, as a figure of nihilism, a moment of inwardness, seeking kleos.
"How soon one discovers that, however much one is in the ordinary sense 'interested in other people', this interest has left one far short of possessing the knowledge required to create a character who is not oneself. It is impossible, it seems to me, not to see one's failure here as a sort of spiritual failure."