A-Writers and B-Writers

The writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it “vow-of-poverty prose.” No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike. Anthony Burgess said there are two kinds of writers, A-writers and B-writers. A-writers are storytellers, B-writers are users of language. And I tend to be grouped in the Bs. Under Nabokov’s prose, under Burgess’s prose, under my father’s prose—his early rather than his later prose—the English sentence is like a poetic meter. It’s a basic rhythm from which the writer is free to glance off in unexpected directions. But the sentence is still there. To be crude, it would be like saying that I don’t trust an abstract painter unless I know that he can do hands. 

MARTIN AMIS

Can I Call Myself a Writer?

The whole “Can I call myself a writer?” question I found so odd, as if it’s some sort of identity that is separate from the actual act of writing. It’s very, very strange to me. There is no secret password to being a writer. There is no secret code. You just do it. People would like to imagine that the work involved is not just the writing itself. There’s serious work in writing. It’s not something other than that, really.

LYNNE TILLMAN

Stories Mimic Life

Stories mimic life like certain insects mimic leaves and twigs. Stories are about all the things that might’ve, could’ve, or would’ve happened, encrowded around and giving density and shape to undeniable physical events and phenomena. They are the rich, unseen underlayer of the most ordinary moments.

MARY GAITSKILL

Line Editing

Very often I’m brought to a halt by some ridiculous mistake that hasn’t been picked up by an editor, which makes me think there can’t be much line-by-line editing going on in publishing houses these days. I don’t know that it matters all that much. It makes a lot of people absolutely furious so they can hardly enjoy reading. But for me if what is being said comes clearly across that’s what matters. It is a bit pedantic to fuss too much about the editing of detail. On the other hand, it does offend my personal instincts, having been trained in the old-fashioned ways, which meant our texts should be perfect. The answer I found for myself is that I take much more trouble than I used to in the line-by-line editing of my own manuscript, and I think authors should now take that responsibility on themselves if they don’t want to be annoyed by minor details. In nearly 50 years as an editor for André Deutsch, I never came across a writer who objected to editing if it made sense, not just in terms of mistakes, which all writers want to be corrected, but the actual way something was written. A lot of writers, for instance Jean Rhys, are perfectionists, so all the editor has to do is spot typing mistakes. I would never have dreamed of suggesting alterations. If we took a book on it meant we liked it; it might in certain respects or details be improved, but if the author didn’t want to change it we didn’t mess around with their texts.

DIANA ATHILL

Blogging

I’m a writer by profession and it’s totally clear to me that since I started blogging, the amount I write has increased exponentially, my daily interactions with the views of others have never been so frequent, the diversity of voices I engage with is far higher than in the pre-Internet age—and all this has helped me become more modest as a thinker, more open to error, less fixated on what I do know, and more respectful of what I don’t. If this is a deterioration in my brain, then more, please.

The problem is finding the space and time when this engagement stops, and calm, quiet, thinking and reading of longer-form arguments, novels, essays can begin. Worse, this also needs time for the mind to transition out of an instant gratification mode to me a more long-term, thoughtful calm. I find this takes at least a day of detox. Getting weekends back has helped. But if there were a way to channel the amazing insights of blogging into the longer, calmer modes of thinking ... we’d be getting somewhere.

I’m working on it.

ANDREW SULLIVAN

Novels Are Not Moral Grammars

The least revealing thing about any book is an author’s intentions. For that reason meeting writers is always an added disappointment. Story allows the writer to escape the sinking jetsam of their character and history and opinion into the chaos of life. Novels are not moral grammars: they exist beyond morality or ethics or politics.

RICHARD FLANAGAN

The Treason of the Artist

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

URSULA K. LeGUIN

Ideal Reader

I think one shouldn’t pussyfoot, and just say that you write the stuff that you would like to read. So you write for yourself, no doubt about that. But I do have a sort of romantic idea of someone in their twenties, of a certain bent, and when they pick up a book by me, they think—as I have done on several occasions—“Ah, here is one for me. Here is a writer who I’ll have to read all of, because they’re speaking directly to me, and they’re writing what I want to read.” And sometimes you’re doing the signing queue and a reader comes past and you sign the book, and there’s a little exchange of the eyes, where you think, “Ah, that’s one of them.” So there is that ideal reader. And it’s someone who’s discovering literature and homes in on you. I’m aware of such readers.

MARTIN AMIS

Trust Your Own Interest

Always work (note, write) from your own interest, never from what you think you should be noting, or writing. Trust your own interest. I have a strong interest, at the moment, in Roman building techniques, thus my notation above, taken down in the Cluny Museum in Paris. My interest may pass. But for the moment I follow it and enjoy it, not knowing where it will go. Let your interest, and particularly what you want to write about, be tested by time, not by other people—either real other people or imagined other people. This is why writing workshops can be a little dangerous, it should be said; even the teachers or leaders of such workshops can be a little dangerous; this is why most of your learning should be on your own. Other people are often very sure that their opinions and their judgments are correct.

LYDIA DAVIS

No Amenities

I used to have a little studio in Brooklyn, a couple of blocks from my house — no telephone, not much else. The only thing I ever did there was work. It was perfect. I was like a draft horse with a conditioned reflex. I came in ready to sit at my desk. No television, no way to call out. Didn’t want to be tempted. There’s an old Talmudic belief that you build a fence around an impulse. If that’s not good enough, you build a fence around the fence. So, no amenities. (But for a refrigerator!)

NORMAN MAILER