The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don’t know – Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel – the quality of philosophy. I find that I read with the same kind of curiosity most novels, and a book of reportage. Most novels, if they are successful at all, are original in the sense that they report the existence of an area of society, a type of person, not yet admitted to the general literate consciousness. The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and more divided, and more subdivided in themselves, reflecting the world, that they reach out desperately, not knowing they do it, for information about other groups inside their own country, let alone about groups in other countries. It is a blind grasping out for their own wholeness, and the novel-report is a means towards it. Doris Lessing
Some Similar Quotes
  1. A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images. - Albert Camus
  2. Semua orang pernah patah hati. All you have to do is move on. - Nina Ardianti
  3. If you only write when you’re inspired you may be a fairly decent poet, but you’ll never be a novelist because you’re going to have to make your word count today and those words aren’t going to wait for you whether you’re inspired or not.... - Neil Gaiman
  4. A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film. - Lorrie Moore
  5. In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns. - Raymond Chandler
More Quotes By Doris Lessing
  1. Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.
  2. There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.
  3. Listen Anna, if we don’t believe the things we put on our agendas will come true for us, then there’s no hope for us. We’re going to be saved by what we seriously put on our agendas.
  4. Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot.
  5. I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
Related Topics