The fiction writer, to acheive the dark comedy of life,
Does best in simple, transparent language to draw that life,
Careful not to intrude on that life
With fancy language or opinions, letting the facts of that life
Do most of the work, like a painter of still life.
No artist, using life, can compete with life.
Life contains endless material for the artist
Who does not find it necessary to invent or feel or think.
A million reporters for one poet: everybody’s a poet, wink, wink.
The Instagram photograph is the new art.
Snap it. Ten thousand pixels: each the perfect singing part.
The picture is laughing, the picture is crying.
Literature—lovely literature! is dying.
The death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic, said Poe.
And the best topic for fiction? I believe I know:
The unhappy beautiful woman.
We are disgusted when an ugly woman has sex.
When a beautiful woman has sex, we are torn,
Since we are happy if we are having sex with her,
But if she is having sex with someone else, we wish she were never born.
If the beautiful woman is not having sex, the harsh division vanishes;
We are no longer torn; we are content to read the fiction
Detailing the unlikely: a beautiful woman’s chaste sadness.
Love produces so much unhappiness
That unhappiness is how we see—the shadows of sorrow covering life,
So love, in unreal ways, might be tolerated, and in very small ways—even for a moment!—loved.
Sex penetrates our consciousness, disguised, and understood, by other means;
Inscrutable chastity!
I read what you wrote, to find out what beauty means.
