Word: fiction
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...animal heat. It is a matter of design, craftsmanship and, as the author has written, "the supreme pleasure of putting oneself in by leaving oneself out." The technique requires the placement of the precise detail at the exact emotional distance, and it gave his autobiography the immediacy of his fiction. Here, for example, is that extraordinary passage from Midnight Oil in which Pritchett describes one of the more dramatic consequences of his father's exasperating personality: "He had no notion of what to do; some bewilderment at the fact that other people existed, independently of himself, made him cling...
...Pritchett had returned to London to write fiction. To support himself he became a critic for the New Statesman. "I rather liked exploration books," he recalls. "They were expensive and could be sold." By World War II he was married, a father and a critic of growing reputation. Yet he still devoted half his working day to fiction. So it has gone ever since, and the rhythm shows no signs of slackening. The question of retirement seems inappropriate. One would rather know what Pritchett is working on now. "Two stories," he replies cheerfully, "at the same time...
Problem: What to do about it? His craftsmanship is clear in his depiction of supermarket and bridge-club life. But those in the John Gardner camp of moral fiction would charge that Updike's skillfulness does not become a vision until he guides his characters, and thus his readers, to the higher ground of moral purpose...
...poured into novels like The Sound and the Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930) netted him almost nothing, and the private squirearchy he was establishing in Oxford, Miss., cost money. Hollywood offered him periodic stints of screen writing, and these paid some bills. The marketplace for short fiction provided another recourse. Luckily for Faulkner, at the time it was enormous: the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, American Mercury, American Magazine, This Week, Woman's Home Companion, Country Gentleman, Scribner's magazine. Faulkner received rejections from all of these journals, some now defunct, as well...
Much of Singer's fiction deals with demons and other elements of Jewish folklore, which he said he read and loved passionately as a child...