An untitled essay on Dorcas as the central character of Jazz

My essay in Eng2333 at UiO. 

Jazz, Toni Morrison’s response to the common identification of the Jazz Age with white people (Carabi), is about jazz and the lives of black people in the 1920s, and about improvisation in jazz music, storytelling and life. The novel begins with Dorcas being murdered by Joe and mutilated by Violet. She is dead, now and then resurrected in flashbacks. She appears to be a supporting character, a part of the examination of Joe’s and Violet’s marriage, lives before marriage and after the scandal. She lacks a sense of self. Nevertheless, in this essay I will argue that Dorcas is the central character of Jazz in the sense that she binds everything together, changes everyone in the novel and makes them think about improvisation in life, which is the main theme of the novel.  

            The murder and mutilation of Dorcas is the central action, the core story of Jazz, which is summarised in the first lines and told over and over again throughout the novel, each time with improvisation and backstories and more layers. The narrator moves back and forth in time but always comes back to the death of Dorcas, then details the effects it has on other characters, as well as the way they respond to and cope with her death. Thus she binds the story together, and connects the characters—changes the relationship between Joe and Violet, causes Violet to speak again, somehow brings Violet to Alice and Felice to Violet and Joe and leads to their unusual, unexpected friendships.

            More importantly, Dorcas affects other characters. The first one is Joe. Before the incident, he is seen as the kind of man that men like and women trust, who treats people kindly, lives honestly and does nothing wrong; he is approved by Alice, who sees danger and evil everywhere. Why does such a man suddenly have an affair with someone so young she could be his daughter, and more shockingly, kill her? It might be said that Dorcas walks into his life when he is already unhappy with his silent wife, and in need of someone whom he can love. He already asks to rent Malvonne’s place before becoming involved with her. It seems that it can be anyone and Dorcas is unimportant, replaceable. But it is more than that. When Violet wonders what Joe sees in her and why he has an affair with her, Alice attributes it to Dorcas’s youth. But it is more than that. Perhaps she reminds him of the image he has in mind of his biological mother, bold, wild, against the rules; perhaps she makes him think of the younger Violet, “snappy, determined” (Morrison 23), but there is a mutual understanding and a bond between them, because both Joe and Dorcas grow up without their real parents and seek an identity, because, young as she is, she knows “what that inside nothing was like” (Morrison 38) and fills it for him. She makes him whole. She makes him feel new and fresh without actively renewing himself as he has done seven times before meeting her. She makes “[him] know a loneliness [he] never could imagine in a forest empty of people for fifteen miles, or on a riverbank with nothing but live bait for company” (Morrison 129) and convinces him “[he] never knew the sweet side of anything until [he] tasted her honey” (ibid.), which is why for all of his life, Joe claims nobody but claims Dorcas and then kills her, for fear of losing her. She removes her hard, indifferent, rebellious shell, reveals her soft, vulnerable side and inspires him to bare his own soul, though he has not got close to anybody since Victory. Because she has enabled him to talk about things he does not even tell himself, it can be argued that her impact remains after she is gone, and when Joe finally comes to terms with his guilt and finds peace, he can have the courage to face and embrace life instead of running around and seeking for something else as he has always done.

            If Dorcas changes Joe while alive, she changes her aunt Alice after she has died. They are opposites. Alice conforms to rules, norms, conventions; Dorcas breaks rules, likes secrets and enjoys the thrill of having a relationship with a married man. Alice thinks even listening to jazz, the lowdown, dirty, harmful, embarrassing music, is like violating the law and therefore closes the windows against it; Dorcas absorbs it all and lives with it. Alice sees the city as full of danger and fears everything; Dorcas fears nothing and wants “to do something scary all the time” (Morrison 202). If Alice does not have a sense of self, as she lets go of it for safety and acceptance, then surrenders and passes on all the rules and constraints that once suffocated her; Dorcas does not have a sense of self either. That is why she keeps looking for something and never feels satisfied. That is why she wants to win, to have what others wish for. That is why she clings to Acton even though he criticises and treats her badly, as she wants to have a personality and with him she gets one, or so she thinks. If Alice is too busy conforming, Dorcas is too busy rebelling. And yet, Dorcas lives. Whilst Alice secretly admires “the coats and the women who wore them” that she outwardly condemns (Morrison 55), chooses “deafness and blindness” to protect herself (Morrison 54), dares not express anger at her husband except through “vicious, childish acts of violence” (Morrison 86), Dorcas lives and breaks rules and tries to find meaning in her life and goes with the flow and takes a plunge and refuses to stay within bounds. She wants to take whatever life has to offer, good or bad, and lives like she knows “how small and quick this little bitty life is” (Morrison 113). She absorbs everything as she has absorbed the music, “the woodchips”, and turns it into fire (Morrison 60- 61).  

            Therefore, in her own way Dorcas changes her aunt, making her re-examine her whole life. She reminds Alice of her younger self, who grew up under “heated control”, deciding never to pass it on, but eventually does and imposes the same rules on Dorcas (Morrison 77). She forces Alice to recognise her own passivity, cowardice and fears and her own surrender, and more importantly, to see the emptiness of her own life—in her fifties Alice has nothing, no husband, no children, nothing of her own, nothing to love, and no self. Losing Dorcas is like losing a daughter, though at the same time Alice perhaps also realises that her overprotection has always kept Dorcas at a distance and made her resist for the sake of resisting, rebel for the sake of rebelling, and revel in the freedom to be self-destructive. The murder makes Alice feel unsafe since danger is not in the streets but inside her home. However, as she ponders over security, unarmed women and women with knives, she comes to see the consequences of choosing the safe way, of conforming to rules, repressing her own desires and throwing away her individuality—she no longer has a self and does not truly live. When saying to Violet “Nobody’s asking you to take it. I’m sayin make it, make it!” (Morrison 113), she seems out of character at first, because she is the one who tends to “take it”, but at this point Alice has realised that herself, thanks to her niece.

            Through Joe and Alice, Dorcas affects Violet. If Dorcas, after filling the emptiness in Joe, devastates him, she wakes up his wife from a long sleep and sets her in motion. For her whole life, Violet has nobody—her father was never home, her mother Rose Dear committed suicide, her grandmother True Belle was immersed in her stories of the idealised Golden Gray. In her fifties Violet has no children; depressed and desperate in her disorientation and mother-hunger, for a long time she is withdrawn into herself, speaking to no one but her parrots. Seeing the chores being done, not herself doing them, she feels nothing, perceives nothing, and finds out about Joe’s affair with Dorcas the moment she knows about his murder of her. This reminds Violet of what she has forgotten—she still has someone to love and care for, who could leave her for Dorcas if not for the murder. She also comes to the realisation thanks to Alice “You got anything left to you to love, anything at all, love it” (Morrison 112), who in her turn learns it from the feeling of loss and emptiness caused by Dorcas’s death. All of the changes in these characters point back to Dorcas, showing the centrality and significance of this character in the novel.  

            Another change is that Dorcas, who knows it because she knows the suddenness of death, reminds Violet that her life is hers. Violet and Alice become some kind of friends because they are united in the feeling that they are both betrayed by Dorcas and Joe; because they are around the same age and have no children; because they do not feign politeness and have clarity. More importantly, after Dorcas, they both are forced to think about their lack or loss of control over their own lives. When Violet tells Felice “Killed her. Then I killed the me that killed her.” (Morrison 209), she refers to the person in her who goes with the flow and gets shaped by external forces, the woman in her who keeps wanting to be something else, the side of her that is immersed in grief and guilt and turns it into violence; and her answer “Me.” (ibid.) to the question “Who’s left?” (ibid.) means that she at last remembers that she has to be herself and regain control over her life.

Echoing Alice’s words “Nobody’s asking you to take it. I’m sayin make it, make it!” (Morrison 113), Violet tells Felice “What’s the world for if you can’t make it up the way you want it? […] If you don’t, it will change you and it’ll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life. […] Forgot it was mine.” (Morrison 208) Dorcas reminds her of her young self, “snappy, determined”. Dorcas reminds her of Rose Dear, who loses the fight and commits suicide. Dorcas makes her realise that she, affected by the migration and miscarriages and absorbed in mother-hunger, loses control and almost loses Joe. Dorcas makes her re-examine her relationship with Joe and think about her own individuality and uniqueness “Who was he thinking of when he ran in the dark to meet me in the cane field? Somebody golden, like my own golden boy, who I never ever saw but who tore up my girlhood as surely as if we’d been the best of lovers? […] Which means from the very beginning I was a substitute and so was he.” (Morrison 97) Nevertheless, original or substitute, Violet has claimed Joe, and knows now that she still wants him “Do I stay with him? I want to, I think. I want… well, I didn’t always… now I want. I want some fat in this life.” (Morrison 110) In the end she makes a choice, and gradually she and Joe reconcile. It might be argued that, in a sense, without Dorcas, Violet would still sink deep in her dejection and the rift between them would always remain and they would never talk. Somehow, Dorcas is a catalyst, a means of bringing them back together, though it takes place at the cost of her life.

Dorcas also changes her close friend. Felice’s reaction “I’m not like her!” (Morrison 209) is a release of her suppressed grief. Looking for the ring is a pretext, she needs to talk to someone and Joe shares with her the memories of Dorcas, and the anguish. Mixed with that sorrow is the feeling of indignation and bitterness at her friend, as she says to Joe “You were the last thing on her mind. I was right there, right there. Her best friend, I thought, but not best enough for her to want to go to the emergency room and stay alive.” (Morrison 213) Felice questions their friendship, and the talk with Joe surprises her when he tells her of Dorcas’s soft side, of which she knows nothing. However, her statement “I’m not like her!” is also an emphasis on her individuality, her sense of self—that she is Felice, not like Dorcas. After the conversation, Joe finds it easier to cope with his sorrows and guilt, Felice comes to terms with everything and makes up her mind to be independent. That is partly influenced by Violet, “Not like the ‘me’ was some tough somebody, or somebody she had put together for show. But like, like somebody she favored and could count on. A secret somebody you didn’t have to feel sorry for or have to fight for.” (Morrison 210) Felice comes to this realisation not only because Violet tells her to make the world up the way she wants it, but also because she witnesses Dorcas burning with her own intensity and destroying herself. She sees Dorcas act like a fool, get into an affair, for the excitement of secrecy, with a man who later kills her, then run after a man who treats her badly, and let herself die. Dorcas is an example of what she does not want to become; because of Dorcas, Felice wants to be independent, be the “me” she can count on.

            Throughout the novel, all these characters, affected by Dorcas, think about their own lives, about the self, individuality, independence, choice and control over their lives. That is the main theme of Jazz. The structure of Jazz—the telling of a story over and over again with added layers and backstories, resembles a jazz piece. The narrator begins the narrating, with predictions, then finds them wrong and has to change in another direction as other voices come in and tell different versions. The characters have to find their own rhythm. All of these are parallel and connected—improvisation in jazz music, improvisation in storytelling, improvisation in life. Dorcas may be a rebel without a cause, who breaks rules merely for the sake of resisting her aunt’s restraining hands. She may be “a pack of lies”, whose “underclothes were beyond her years, even if her dress wasn't” (Morrison 72). She may be a fool who goes after the wrong men. She may be a selfish girl who chooses to die before her best friend and at her last moment thinks about nothing but Joe. She may be self-destructive in her intensity and her desperate desire for “attention and excitement” (Morrison 205). And yet, in spite of all that, she affects other characters and shocks them into re-examining their own lives and acts as a catalyst for their revelation and change.

            Jazz centres around Dorcas’s death and the impact it has on other characters. She breaks them, and also heals them. She brings Joe and Violet back together, leads to the friendship between Violet and Alice, connects Violet, Joe and Felice, and binds the whole novel together. She causes them to think about independence and the self and the lack or loss of control over their lives. She causes them to change. Therefore, in this sense, Dorcas is the glue and the central character of Jazz. 

Bibliography

Carabi, Angels. "Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison Speaks about Her Novel Jazz". In Toni Morrison: Conversations, edited by Carolyn C. Denard, 91- 97. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2008. https://books.google.no/books?id=eV9_8v4pTzsC&dq=jazz+toni+morrison&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York: Plume Books, 1993.

Wandering, wondering- Acton in Jazz

A literary work is a fairytale, and the characters don't exist outside it. I know that. But sometimes my mind wanders and I forget. 
Right now, for example, writing an essay about Jazz and focusing on the impact of Dorcas's death on other characters and the way they respond to it and cope with it, I start to wonder about Acton. It doesn't matter, perhaps. But I know how Alice and Violet and Joe and Felice feel, and want to know how Acton feels, considering that he's a playboy and a narcissist. 
The characters don't care- Alice, Violet and Joe don't know about him. Felice, who does know, doesn't care. The narrator doesn't care. The author apparently doesn't care. Dorcas perhaps doesn't care either- at her last moment her thoughts are about Joe. But I care. Not that I identify with the dead girl. I don't (or do I?). But I'd like to know anyway, even though that adds nothing to the novel. An unimportant bit missing that is not missed by anybody but me. 
In the end there are no answers, only questions: Surrounded by so many girls who want him and see it as a race or a fight, does Acton remember Dorcas? Does he miss her? Does he grieve? 

Jazz- spoiler alert

I've just read Angels Carabi's interview with Toni Morrison. In it, Toni Morrison explains pretty much everything she does in Jazz: that the title refers to the music (improvisation in jazz music, improvisation in storytelling, improvisation in life) and to the things people associate with jazz (sex, violence, chaos, something vulgar), that the narrator is the voice of a talking book (not herself), that the book (the last part especially) is an erotic love song to the readers, that the book (that is, the narrator) knows nothing but hears other voices and learns more about the characters and finds its predictions wrong, that the book writing itself is an interesting technical idea, that Dorcas feels empowered by her relationship with Joe, that Felice questions her friendship with Dorcas and changes afterwards and decides to become independent, that Joe feels less bad when learning about Dorcas's last moments, that Wild is a kind of Beloved... 
Isn't that lovely and touching? See how kind Toni Morrison is, to clarify everything for a stupid reader like me! 

3 mothers who abandon their babies

Of the 6 novels I've read over the past few months (Shirley, Daniel Deronda, The Moonstone, Despair, Jazz, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), 3 have a mother that abandons her child.
In Daniel Deronda, after many years Princess Leonora meets her son Daniel Deronda, gives him the answers. There are 2 main reasons: 1 is that as a Jew she believes it's better to let her son have an English upbringing and become an English gentleman, away from Judaism and the Jews and all the negative things associated with Jews ("I relieved you from the bondage of having been born a Jew", "I chose for you what I would have chosen for myself"...), the other is that she cannot be a mother ("I had not much affection to give you. I did not want affection. I had been stifled with it", "I wanted to live out the life that was in me, and not to be hampered with other lives", "I did not want a child", "I did not want to marry [...] I had a right to be free", "I will not pretend to love where I have no love"...)
We may not agree with her decision to conceal from Daniel his identity and heritage, we may not approve of her hatred of being Jewish, we may find her too cold, selfish and cruel, but somehow her thoughts and actions are understandable and therefore acceptable. Especially when we consider that Daniel gladly accepts and embraces his own Jewishness because he himself wishes it, due to Mirah and Mordecai, mostly Mirah, a different man under these circumstances is not likely to condemn the Princess and resent her decision as strongly as Daniel does.
In Jazz, we don't know why. But we know something's not right with Wild.
"In the trees to his left, he sees a naked berry-black woman. She is covered with mud and leaves are in her hair. Her eyes are large and terrible. As soon as she sees him, he starts then turns suddenly to run, but in turning before she looks away she knocks her head against the tree she has been leaning against. Her terror is so great her body flees before her eyes are ready to find the route of escape. The blow blocks her out and down."
That encounter between her and Golden Gray is the 1st time we see Wild. Golden Gray picks her up, tries to save her, brings her to the place of Hunters Hunter, then she gives birth. The kid is probably Joe Trace, we don't know for sure, but Joe assumes so, and we may believe so. That is a different story, however- to get back to Wild, she never speaks a word. The 1st thing she does when waking up is to bite Hunters' Hunter. Nuts.
Look at this:
"She lived close, they said, not way off in the woods or even down in the riverbed, but somewhere in that cane field- at its edge some said or maybe moving around in it. Close. Cutting cane could get frenzied sometimes when young men got the feeling she was just yonder, hiding, and probably looking at them."
And then this:
"The cane field where Wild hid, or watched, or laughed out loud, or stayed quite burned for months. [...] Would she know? he wondered. Would she understand that fire was not light or flowers moving toward her, or flying golden hair? That if you tried to kiss it, it would swallow your breath away?"
Wild never speaks a word, not even once. I'm not sure if she does speak. It's not simply that there's no direct quote, but there's no indication of her saying anything either. A short while after having her baby, she goes away, probably into the woods, followed by Golden Gray. And never comes back for her kid (if she's indeed Joe's mother, that is). Joe asks questions, and Hunters Hunter says "She got reasons. Even if she crazy. Crazy people got reasons."
Then it kind of makes sense. She's crazy! 
(Toni Morrison clarifies it for us: "a simple-minded woman too silly to beg for a living. Too brain-blased to do what they meanest sow managed: nurse what she birthed. The small children believed she was a witch, but they were wrong. This creature hadn't the intelligence to be a witch. She was powerless, invisible, wastefully daft.")
And then in Shirley, we find another mother letting go of her child. Let's hear what Mrs Pryor says to Caroline: 
"I had reason to dread a fair outside, to mistrust a popular bearing, to shudder before distinction, grace, and courtesy. Beauty and affability had come in my way when I was recluse, desolate, young, and ignorant—a toil-worn governess perishing of uncheered labour, breaking down before her time. These, Caroline, when they smiled on me, I mistook for angels. I followed them home; and when into their hands I had given without reserve my whole chance of future happiness, it was my lot to witness a transfiguration on the domestic hearth—to see the white mask lifted, the bright disguise put away, and opposite me sat down— O God, I have suffered!" 
And:
"I let you go as a babe, because you were pretty, and I feared your loveliness, deeming it the stamp of perversity. They sent me your portrait, taken at eight years old; that portrait confirmed my fears. Had it shown me a sunburnt little rustic—a heavy, blunt-featured, commonplace child—I should have hastened to claim you; but there, under the silver paper, I saw blooming the delicacy of an aristocratic flower—'little lady' was written on every trait. I had too recently crawled from under the yoke of the fine gentleman—escaped galled, crushed, paralyzed, dying—to dare to encounter his still finer and most fairy-like representative. My sweet little lady overwhelmed me with dismay; her air of native elegance froze my very marrow. In my experience I had not met with truth, modesty, good principle as the concomitants of beauty. A form so straight and fine, I argued, must conceal a mind warped and cruel. I had little faith in the power of education to rectify such a mind; or rather, I entirely misdoubted my own ability to influence it. Caroline, I dared not undertake to rear you. I resolved to leave you in your uncle's hands." 
What? 
I know Mrs Pryor has a hard life, full of suffering, as a governess, and as a wife. I know hardships and experiences with unpleasant people make her pessimistic, cynical, to some extent misanthropic. I understand that sometimes a woman extends the loathing of her husband to their child. But "I let you go as a babe, because you were pretty, and I feared your loveliness"? To quote G. H. Lewes: "Really this is midsummer madness!" 

Jazz by Toni Morrison

Warning: This book contains adultery, miscarriages, mother hunger, depression, irrational behaviour, slavery, racism, child abandonment, suicide, murder, mutilation of a dead body, and more.

OK, joking. Couldn't help it, after reading this post: 
https://argumentativeoldgit.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/trigger-happy-readers/






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The characters in Jazz lack a sense of self. Alice Manfred is afraid of everything that she practices self-denial, suppresses her own desires and wishes, chooses the safe way, repeats exactly what her parents have done to her that she thought she would never do herself, imposes those hard rules on her young niece. Her niece Dorcas loses her parents from a young age and has hardly anyone but a strict aunt, whom she resists, and she does everything that she's not supposed to do, live fast, die young. Neither have a self, neither truly live- Alice's too busy conforming, Dorcas's too busy rebelling. Dorcas accepts Joe because of his affection and devotion, and the fascination of breaking rules- to have a secret affair with a married man old enough to be her father; and leaves him because he accepts everything about her, whereas she needs someone to shape her, create a sense of self for her, as Acton does. Joe Trace reacts to being abandoned by his own parents and having no last name by creating his own self and renewing it 7 times, only to carry within him an empty nothing until he meets Dorcas- the man who has never claimed anything now claims Dorcas and later can't cope with her leaving him, that he shoots her to revenge or to keep her to himself, so that she can never belong to anyone else. Violet comes to the City, the place of hope and the future, while still stuck in her past, and after 3 miscarriages she has guilt, like the voice in Gwendolyn Brooks's poem "The Mother" (though these are miscarriages, not abortions, the feeling is similar because for a while Violet doesn't want children), and later becomes more and more desperate in her mother hunger, more and more depressed, that she finds herself split into 2 and sees the chores being done instead of seeing herself doing them, just as people see her as having 2 sides, the Violet side and the Violent side. She never has anything- her father is never home, her mother Rose Dear jumps into a well, her grandmother True Belle is too obsessed with the figure of Golden Gray that remains forever stamped in Violet's mind, she claims Joe (Joe doesn't claim her), she lives in the City having nothing, no children, and later no Joe either. But if Dorcas devastates and kills Joe emotionally, with his murder of her, she wakes up Violet and sets her in motion. 
Even Golden Gray, the perfect boy, the golden boy, doesn't have a self either. The moment he finds out that his biological mother pretends to have adopted him and that he has black blood, or maybe later, when he meets his own father and gets insulted for his hesitation to embrace his own identity, he has an identity crisis and his whole world falls apart. Knowing that he belongs nowhere, he finds refuge in Wild's world. 

Literary prejudices

We all have literary prejudices, don't we? Like some people refuse to read Nabokov, at least Lolita, because they think it romanticises paedophilia, or because they are repulsed by the idea of entering the mind of a paedophile. Or some others have no intention of reading Jane Austen because they think her books are sentimental, or shallow and boring, or no more than romcom and chicklit. Etc. 
Well here comes a confession: I have my prejudices as well.
The 1st one is Hemingway. Yes, Ernest Hemingway. I haven't read his books- or maybe I did read something a long time ago when I was a kid, but that doesn't count. Why the prejudice? It started with a Team Fitzgerald vs Team Hemingway thing on the internet a while ago (like Tolstoy vs Dostoyevsky, Jane Austen vs the Brontes, etc.) It's cooled now, but back then I loved Fitzgerald- The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night especially, and some short stories like "May Day", and Hemingway was contrasted with the romantic Fitzgerald as a sort of playboy. Macho. Arrogant. Egoistic. Zelda hated him, he hated Zelda. I saw many comments saying that his female characters were there only to glorify the protagonists, who were more or less versions of the author himself. And then I knew about the Hemingway vs Faulkner thing, I was obviously on Faulkner's side. Hemingway's comeback was, theoretically, a good one, but I loved The Sound and the Fury, and a glance now and then at some of Hemingway's quotes and passages, I thought I didn't like his plain style. Adding to that was the "bells, balls and bulls" remark- Nabokov loathed him. What was I supposed to do? But that's not all. A couple of years ago I read a chapter from Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark about the black characters in his books. Still remember a few details: the white character was "the man" and the black character was "the nigger", Hemingway wrote "I saw that [the nigger] had seen..." (to avoid a speaking black, created a sentence "improbable in syntax, sense and tense"- Toni Morrison's words), the black man's loud moaning and complaint when he was slightly injured was contrasted with the white protagonist's stoic endurance of his serious wounds so that Hemingway could stress the white character's strength, bravery and manliness.
So before reading him I already had so many prejudices in mind, and they would definitely affect my reading.
Another one is V. S. Naipaul. I know, I know, he's important, he's huge, he's acclaimed by some as the greatest living writer of English prose, and so on and so forth. Perhaps he's great too. But he's an ass. A sexist, no, misogynist. A racist. Heard all the things he said about women and women writers? The things he said about Africans and Muslims? Arrogant and self-important too. Said no female writer was on a par with him. He even said that Jane Austen was "sentimental". What kind of person reads Jane Austen and still thinks her sentimental? Nabokov's also sexist and arrogant, but the things he said were more tolerable. And guess what, Naipaul said this about Nabokov "It's bogus, calling attention to itself. Americans do that. All those beautiful sentences. What are they for?", and about Pnin "It was silly. There was nothing in it. What do people see in him?". I know, I know, writers say bad things about each other all the time. Considered separately, these things are OK, but put together, they create such a negative impression that I want to stay away from his works altogether. If he meant every single thing he said, he's an ass and I can't take him seriously. If he didn't, but said to provoke, he's self-important and ridiculous and therefore also an ass. 
This is double standard, you say. Why am I OK with Nabokov's arrogance and his strong opinions? But I never have the impression that Nabokov expressed his disdain of acclaimed writers only to be provocative, and while dismissing some, he praised others, and he valued true art above all else. True art, originality, genius, beauty. I suppose I'm OK with his remarks not simply because he's Nabokov and he's allowed to say all that, but also because I understand his aesthetics and understand his reasons for having a high or low opinion of a writer. Things Naipaul said just didn't make sense. Like, about George Eliot he said "Childhood, you know, childhood. A little of The Mill on the Floss was read to me. It mattered at the time. But as you get older, your tastes and needs change. I don’t like her or the big English writers". What are you talking about? As though George Eliot's books are for children. 
The 3rd one would be Karl Ove Knausgård. Yes, the Norwegian guy who wrote 6 books about himself and his own life, and called them Min Kamp. The title in English is My Struggle, but it's Min Kamp in Norwegian, like Hitler's Mein Kampf. He's Norwegian, what on earth did he have to put into 6 books? It's about 5000 or 6000 pages or something. Norway's 1 of the most uneventful places ever, nothing happens. Knausgård seems popular in the US, but here he's controversial. Why? Because he put everything into his books, all the details about his personal life and the people around him. He even wrote that his wife snored, or whatever. He wrote lots of awful things about his family and relatives and friends and acquaintances that he antagonised everybody. When he wrote his 1st book, he showed it to some people in the family and they objected to it, but he changed a bit and went ahead and published it, and wrote another 5 books. People wanted to sue him, so now he lives in Sweden. My experiences of Norwegian literature hitherto haven't been very pleasant and have created a negative impression, that sort of influenced my view on Knausgård. And why should I read about this man's life? Why should I read about the real people around him, why should I know their personal stories, private details? Why should I read a book with a painful awareness that he's exposing and using someone else's life and that they're hurt by it? And also the thought that he had to write about himself because he didn't have the imagination to create characters and imagine stories. 6 memoirs sound self-indulgent. My Norwegian friends were assigned the 1st book in their Norwegian class, and many of them talked about it to me. Things like, he went to a party, and then went on for several pages talking about life and death. Boring, they said. I generally didn't trust their judgement, but I remember that. Besides, Knausgård's compared to Proust. Comparisons like that make me suspicious, sceptical. Most of the time they make no sense. Then there are of course people who argue that he's nothing like Proust except the big volumes and the examination of the past and such, that Knausgård has a plain, very plain, unpolished, seemingly careless style. Who likes that? Those who praise him say that he wrote about banality and boredom in a fascinating way, but that makes me more suspicious. I have SAD, that kind of book doesn't sound like something I'd like to read, especially in winter. 
This year, because of the Norwegian literature challenge I started, I've been thinking about reading Knausgård, but I still have some doubt. 
So that's it- those 3 are my main literary prejudices. Fight me. Argue with me. Yell at me if you like. Prove me wrong. Convince me. Show me how irrational and unreasonable I am.
[Out of pure curiosity: What are your literary prejudices?] 

Top 10 favourite novels [updated]

1/ Anna Karenina (Lev Tolstoy) 
2/ War and Peace (Lev Tolstoy) 
3/ The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner) 
4/ Notes from Underground (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) 
5/ Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) 
6/ Mansfield Park (Jane Austen)
7/ Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) 
8/ Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert)
9/ The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)
10/ 100 Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

(probably better seen as a list rather than a ranking, I'm not 100% certain of the numbers).

On "Invisible man" (Ralph Ellison)

Does anybody now like to read about the black-white conflict? Slavery? Segregation? Civil rights movement? Does anybody now like to read about how badly whites treated blacks? Enslaved? Humiliated? Oppressed? Held down?
Well I don't. And it's not because of political reasons, the only reason is that this topic has been utilised, and exploited, so many times, which I have read in books and seen in films and TV shows and documentaries, that it no longer interests me. The well-done film "The butler" did not. The upcoming "12 years a slave" does not (though I'll watch it). The subject matter bores me to death.
Anyone who has read Toni Morrison understands; those who haven't must wonder why, in spite of what's written above, 1 of my top favourite writers is black. I read and revere Toni Morrison for her rhythm, for her lyrical language, for her magical metaphors, for her deep understanding of human beings, for the sympathy she has for all of her characters by letting us see their perspectives... Above all, she writes about black people as a people, independent and interesting on its own with its lives and culture and customs and habits and such, not an oppressed people, not a people in relation to another people (whites). Even when her novel deals with slavery, such as in "Beloved", it's more about her people, how they live, what they do with their lives and how they interact with each other, than about the black-white conflict. Nor is she afraid of making others think badly about black people, when creating some bad black characters, because propagandist literature is not literature, and her world is diverse and real with all its light and shade, good and bad.
Likewise, "Invisible man" by Ralph Ellison has intrigued and engrossed me, after some initial tediousness of the subject matter. The most fascinating aspect is that the book presents a mindset among African Americans, a determination to strive and succeed and prove themselves, a resolution to uplift the black people and better the image of black people, thus, a tendency to hide from white Americans everything negative about blacks, and thus, a tendency to dislike and destroy all the black people who contribute to the negative stereotypes, disdain and contempt against their own group. I haven't known about such thinking. The narrator is expelled by the black schoolmaster, not by 1 of the white trustees. And of course, "Invisible man" deals with some other mindsets as well- some people think in terms of race, some in terms of ideology; some in terms of individuals, some in terms of larger interests, the bigger picture. 
(The conflict between the narrator and the Brotherhood, in my opinion, is not that between blacks and whites, but more like that between a person who cares about individuals and an organisation that puts more stress on the bigger picture. That is, I have tried replacing in my mind the race of the Brotherhood members and it doesn't make much difference what race they belong to).  
I, too, start developing a theory whilst reading this book, but will write about it later, if possible. 
With respect to aesthetic value, the book is well-written. Heavy, but not dull, it's vivid, realistic, complex and thought-provoking.
I recommend.

Miscellaneous: woman, woman reader, woman writer

1/ Charlotte Bronte's reply to a critic:
"Whenever I do write another book, I think I will have nothing of what you call "melodrama." I think so, but I am not sure. I think, too, I will endeavour to follow the counsel which shines out of Miss Austen's "mild eyes," to finish more, and be more subdued; but neither am I sure of that. When authors write best, or, at least, when they write most fluently, an influence seems to waken in them which becomes their master -- which will have its way -- putting out of view all behests but its own, dictating certain words, and insisting on their being used, whether vehement or measured in their nature, new moulding characters, giving unthought of turns to incidents, rejecting carefully elaborated old ideas, and suddenly creating and adopting new ones. Is it not so? And should we try to counteract this influence? Can we indeed counteract it?"

Jane Austen's reply to a critic:
"You are very kind in your hints as to the sort of composition which might recommend me at present, and I am fully sensible that an historical romance, founded on the House of Saxe-Cobourg, might be much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in. But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other."


2/ http://chronicle.com/article/Jane-Austens-Well-Known-Style/125078/
According to the article above, research has shown that there are differences between Jane Austen's manuscripts and the published texts in terms of spelling, punctuation and grammar, so negatively speaking, much of her style isn't hers, contrary to the public's view of her as a perfect stylist, and she owed much to the editor; or positively speaking, she had an innovative, experimental voice that wouldn't be heard again till the early 20th century and she thus was ahead of her time.
To be honest I don't know which of these 2 possibilities is the case and can't even say if there indeed are significant differences, not having seen the examples. All I can say is that I have read many of her letters and her style is pretty much the same there as in the novels I've read and people are unlikely to have changed anything except the spelling (indeed, Jane Austen was a horrible speller), the random capitalisation common in English writings at the time and the ampersands and some minor errors/ inconsistencies. 

1 thing that attracted my attention is that 1 person commented "The question that arises for me from this information is whether or not this is a case of a male publisher distorting or silencing a female voice?"
Then somebody else snapped back "As a professional editor, and a woman, please know that I distort and/or silence MALE voices every single day. It's my job.
I am a pedant, and the genitalia of authors has no bearing on my obsessive compulsion to repair errant grammar, bad punctuation, and poor word choice.
I abhor the knee-jerk tendencies of some (c.f., mren2 above) to make a feminist (or racist) issue out of every simple human interaction. That proclivity is divisive and, if I may be frank, immature." 

This is absolutely true.
If Jane Austen was bad at spelling, grammar and punctuation, the editor was doing his job. If she was indeed an experimenter and the editor misunderstood her and corrected her style, that only means that he was an ordinary man who was unable to understand what she was doing and that she was ahead of her time. Why must it have had something to do with sexism?


3/ A bit of feminism in Emily's "Wuthering heights":
"‘He’s in the court,’ he replied, ‘talking to Doctor Kenneth; who says uncle is dying, truly, at last.  I’m glad, for I shall be master of the Grange after him.  Catherine always spoke of it as her house.  It isn’t hers!  It’s mine: papa says everything she has is mine.  All her nice books are mine; she offered to give me them, and her pretty birds, and her pony Minny, if I would get the key of our room, and let her out; but I told her she had nothing to give, they were all, all mine.  And then she cried, and took a little picture from her neck, and said I should have that; two pictures in a gold case, on one side her mother, and on the other uncle, when they were young.  That was yesterday—I said they were mine, too; and tried to get them from her.  The spiteful thing wouldn’t let me: she pushed me off, and hurt me.  I shrieked out—that frightens her—she heard papa coming, and she broke the hinges and divided the case, and gave me her mother’s portrait; the other she attempted to hide: but papa asked what was the matter, and I explained it.  He took the one I had away, and ordered her to resign hers to me; she refused, and he—he struck her down, and wrenched it off the chain, and crushed it with his foot.’"


4/ Toni Morrison on rape:
"Rape is a criminal act whatever the circumstances. A woman riding the subway nude may be guilty of indecency, but she may not be raped. If she invites or even sells sex at 10:00 and refuses it at 10:45, the partner who disregards her refusal and forces sex is guilty of rape. If she is drunk, asleep, mentally defective, paralyzed or dead, she must not be raped. Why? Because sexual congress must be by consent."


5/ http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?22769-Who-really-wrote-Wuthering-Heights
Ah! Conspiracy theory.
"While the three Bronte sisters, Emily, Anne and Charlott met with great literary success with Withering Heigths, Agnes Grey and Jane Eyre, biographers suggest that it was actually their genius brother Branwell Bronte who was behind it all.
So why did he alone perish in anonymity? It’s a sad story of a man whose fertile mind and high flights of fancy were never allowed to take wings in the real world. As a child, Branwell was the leader among his sisters. If he cried, they cried. He laughed, they laughed. They followed him everywhere; delighted by the fantastical characters he created and awed by his brilliance..."
Branwell must have been behind it all because, well, it's impossible to believe that in such a family all the 3 sisters are acclaimed and well-known today, especially the 2 older ones, whereas the only one who perished in anonymity was a man! 
More interestingly, let's consider the theory: Branwell wrote all these shocking, scandalous books, then signed as 3 different masculine/ unisex pseudonyms Currer Bell, Ellis Bell, Acton Bell because it was difficult for authoresses at the time in a male-dominated society, and then when the question of their identities was raised, he told his sisters to appear and tell publishers that they were the ones that wrote those books?


6/ My gender does not disappear when I read just because I do not discriminate against an author based on gender. I read as a reader and as a female.


7/ Adrienne Rich sees Jane Eyre as more valuable to the woman reader than Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary and Catherine Earnshaw combined. That is true.


8/ In the end, I'd like to end this post with something happy-go-lucky:
Here is the witty, humorous Emma Thompson, receiving a Golden Globe for her "Sense and sensibility" screenplay, pretending to be Jane Austen:



Even more hilarious is her diary from the filming. Here are some extracts: 
http://theotherausten.tumblr.com/post/66288230010/saintkitten-im-reading-emma-thompsons-diaries
http://sapphoshands.tumblr.com/post/14065351419/thequietworld-cheia-brideofgob

"The sound and the fury"- section 3

1/ Jason is a douchebag. Period. 
I am aware: 
a) Jason isn't close to any of his siblings. He doesn't really have anybody. 
b) Being a favourite of his mother doesn't make it better for him. Caroline Compson prefers him because to her he's a true Bascomb (she was a Bascomb before getting married and changing her name) while all the others are Compsons, but she, selfish and hypochondriac and neglectful, doesn't give him more love than she does other children though she repeatedly says so. 
c) Their father sells Benjy's pasture to get money for Quentin to go to Harvard and for Caddy to get married to Herbert but Jason gets nothing. 
d) Both Quentin and Caddy waste their opportunities, which Jason never has in the 1st place. 
e) Herbert promises Jason a job in the bank and this chance is ruined when Caddy's cast off by her husband and it's her fault, at least according to Jason. 
f) Many years later when Quentin has committed suicide and Caddy's become an outsider, Jason becomes the head of the family and has to work and earn money for his sick mother, his mentally challenged brother Benjy and his niece Quentin (and the servants).
So yes, I understand that life's hard for him and, in some sense, unfair. 
But: 
a) Can anybody like Jason? As a kid he's a tattletale and doesn't form a bond with his siblings. Older, he's bitter, spiteful, cynical, mean, materialistic, incapable of loving anybody or anything except money.
b) He always puts the blame on other people, especially Caddy, holds a grudge for years and can never forgive anybody nor be thankful to anybody. For example he doesn't consider that he wouldn't have the chance of a job at a bank if not for Caddy. 
c) He lies, steals the money Caddy sends for her daughter Quentin and cheats his mother. 
d) He robs Quentin Jr of her mother, of family, and of a love or at least some kindness she deserves. 
e) He's a racist.
f) He's a misogynist. His thoughts show that he doesn't hate only Caddy and Quentin but women in general. Or maybe he's just sexist. 
g) As a kid he cuts up Benjy's dolls. As an adult he burns free passes for nothing but meanness only because he enjoys tormenting Luster. 
h) He's cruel and yet he always victimises himself, believing other people are being cruel and unfair to him. 
So no, don't tell me he's mean and selfish for a reason. That's no excuse. 


2/ It's not difficult to see William Faulker's influence on Toni Morrison. At least they've got a few things in common: regional literature, rich language, cadence, rhythm, multiple narrative voices... 
That is not to say Toni Morrison doesn't have qualities and special things of her own. But that is to be saved for another post. 


3/ "The sound and the fury" gets easier and easier. 
The 1st part, as I've written, is a mess, where things are told in non-chronological order by a mentally deficient guy who hardly knows what's what, what's going on and why things happen. The whole time the reader has to try to figure out which period it is and what Benjy's talking about. His section is of memories, scenes and fragments, the reader has to put all the pieces together. 
The 2nd part is easier. Events of the present are told chronologically, but they're mixed with Quentin's stream of consciousness, his memories and conflicting thoughts and emotions while he's in a deteriorating state of mind. The stream of consciousness passages are difficult to digest because Faulkner disregards punctuation, grammar and capitalisation, creating a rambling series of words and phrases that sometimes hardly make sense. 
Then the 3rd part's even easier. Jason's a straightforward, unsentimental or even heartless person, so he narrates chronologically what's going on, with his comments and thoughts. Once in a while he talks about some specific things in the past out of bitterness, rage and hatred, but they don't occupy much of the narrative. The difficulties one has to deal with are only the dialect he uses and the annoyance at a douchebag's rant. 
Following that, the 4th part's likely to be most readable and accessible, considering that it's told by an omniscient narrator.


4/ Having finished reading the 3rd section, I've come to the conclusion that "The sound and the fury" revolves around Caddy. Though she isn't a narrator and we don't know what goes on in her head, Caddy's the central character, who has had more influence on and evoked stronger feelings from each of her brothers than anybody has done. Thus each of the 1st 3 sections is a response to her and what she has done and how she has affected them. 

More will be written about Caddy.  

Toni Morrison's quotes

I know I haven't written much about Toni Morrison, but she's my favourite authoress of all time. I love her works and admire her, for the music in her language, for her compelling storytelling, for her vivid imagery and rich metaphors, for her shocking and thought-provoking and haunting stories, for her lively and convincing characters and her ability to see things from different points of view and to understand and help us understand her characters, and above all, for the inspiration she has given me. 


http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/117810.shtml

"There is no place you or I can go, to think about or not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves; nothing that reminds us of the ones who made the journey and of those who did make it. There is no suitable memorial or plaque or wreath or wall or park or skyscraper lobby. There’s no 300-foot tower. There’s no small bench by the road. There is not even a tree scored, an initial that I can visit or you can visit in Charleston or Savannah or New York or Providence, or better still, on the banks of the Mississippi. And because such a place doesn’t exist (that I know of), the book had to."

"It’s true that when I first began to write, my work was much criticized—even despised I think—because I was not writing happy stories, about people who were able to put it all together in spite of difficulties, about people who had risen to a certain status. I realized that it was a problem, and I realized how important positive images could be, but I thought that nobody intelligent would take that seriously as criticism of a writer. If the critics felt that they could force me to “write positive images,” then clearly they assumed that I was writing for white people. It was a demand that I create an image for the “other” as opposed to my making an intimate and direct account to the people in the book and to black people. I thought the complaint was just headline stuff: things to say to reporters."

"I didn’t think about being a writer as a young person. I was content to be a reader, an editor, a teacher. I thought that everything that was worth reading had probably been written, and if it hadn’t somebody would write it eventually. I didn’t become interested in writing until I was about thirty years old. I didn’t really regard it as writing then, although I was putting words on paper. I thought of it as a very long, sustained reading process—except that I was the one producing the words. It doesn’t sound very ambitious or even sensible now. But I’m very happy with that attitude. The complicated way in which I try to bring the reader in as co-author or a complicitous person really stems from my desire to be engaged as a reader myself."

"It’s humiliating to be asked to write propaganda. That’s not literature."

"With regard to inspiration, I have to tell you that I was so self-conscious about developing a style of my own, about going to a place that I thought was virgin territory, that I was terrified of reading. Most writers don’t read anybody while they are writing, because they don’t want anything to rub off. I was very concerned about developing this sound that I thought would be my own. I was not convinced I had done it until Sula. That book seemed to suggest that I had hit on a voice that was mine, that I didn’t write like anybody else."

"Experience just for the sake of it is almost pointless. If you can’t make anything coherent out of it then it’s not information. It’s not knowledge. And it certainly may not be creatively handled. Some people sit on the edge of bank and fish all day. They don’t even talk and yet they’re complex and fascinating. You have to work within your own life.
My life now is as uneventful as you can imagine. And that’s just the way I like it. I’m interested in what I think. I’m interested in what I imagine. I am not fascinated with my autobiography however. I’m reminded of a number of biographies about the wives of great writers that I’ve just been reading. It’s amazing how the fecund imagination of certain powerful gentlemen has been in fact almost a theft of the fecund existence of the mate. So I don’t have an answer for you. If you find that your work is mediocre it may not be because you haven’t lived. It may be because you have not learned enough about the craft."



Some other quotes by Toni Morrison:

"You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think that because he doesn't want you anymore that he is right -- that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Don't. It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn't be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can't even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, because the clouds let him; they don't wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him. You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself."

"She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order."

"Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it."

"What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?"

"I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean."

"Lonely, ain't it?
Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely."

"Anything dead coming back to life hurts."

"And talking about dark! You think dark is just one color, but it ain't. There're five or six kinds of black. Some silky, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don't stay still, it moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is just before it breaks loose to storm? Well, night black is the same way. May as well be a rainbow."

"The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas."

"Every now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of his having ever been there. Where were the butterflies? the blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for he had left nothing but his stunning absence."

"If you surrender to the wind you can ride it."

"All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.
And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word."

"It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow."

"Something that is loved is never lost."

"It was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both. In sorting it all out, he hit on the notion that if one day a year were devoted to it, everybody could get it out of the way and the rest of the year would be safe and free. In this manner he instituted National Suicide Day."

"When I was a little girl the heads of my paper dolls came off, and it was a long time before I discovered that my own head would not fall off if I bent my neck. I used to walk around holding it very stiff because I thought a strong wind or a heavy push would snap my neck. Nel was the one who told me the truth. But she was wrong. I did not hold my head stiff enough when I met him and so I lost it just like the dolls."

"People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, 'cause you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever."

"I don't believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but they were political, because that's what an artist is--a politician."

"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power."

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."