Word: author
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...course Wolfe must pay a price for such dexterity. Since every character he recreates speaks with an equal force, the author's particular vantage point remains frustratingly ambiguous. In only one section of The Acid Test--a digression on the Rat aesthetic of the Southwest--does Wolfe permit himself to be unequivocally "satirical." Most of the time, he is simply too busy loving what he criticizes to be really vindictive...
...changed. Liberated chicks began slipping the word into conversations during this past decade but we didn't really mind, because it was still private and full of meaning. When good novels could no longer sell without it well, that was all right, too; it was passed strictly between the author (ess) and the reader...
...replies to those objections so unanswerably. After the discussion, Styron asked why the students--and the students weren't black militants, they were white, or moderate, or both--had insisted in asking questions which verged, well, on insult. The reason is that Styron didn't look like an author, a man deeply troubled by hard-to-grasp, will-o'-the-wisp problems; he looked like an administrator...
Deep down, we would like every writer to be either a natural reaconteur or a mystic. Partly, this is because the role goes with the job, as the priest's garb goes with his--we want assurance that the author is inspired. Partly, it is because personality is something we can grasp and bring down to earth: if we can possess the personality, perhaps we can possess the inspiration. The poet-priest is sacred; no one (now) would dare be hostile to Borges...
Styron does not discuss the work as literature: "I don't think it's right to ask an author to defend his work on literary grounds, and I didn't come here to do that...