Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.
Clive JamesRead
I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.
Interpretation
What this quote means
An author’s responsibility is to keep the reader engaged to maintain their interest.
Clive James emphasizes the importance of engaging writing, suggesting that the writer should assume or fear that if the writing becomes uninteresting, the reader will lose interest. This highlights the writer's role in captivating their audience and maintaining attention throughout the piece.
Themes
WritingReaderEngagementInterestCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
A writing workshop discussing the importance of maintaining reader interest.
More from Clive James
All quotes →Murray sounds like a blindfolded man riding a unicycle on the rim of the pit of doom, the men actually facing the danger are all so taciturn that you might as well try interviewing the cars themselves.
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Prejudices are useless. Call Los Angeles any dirty name you like - Six Suburbs in Search of a City, Paradise with a Lobotomy, anything - but the fact remains that you are already living in it before you get there
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Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.
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I was wrong, however, to suppose that Sellers thought the world revolved around him. He thought the cosmos did too, and history, and the fates... Like every egomaniac, he behaved as if everybody else spent their day being as interested in him as he was.
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The essence of a class system is not that the privileged are conscious of their privileges, but that the deprived are conscious of their deprivations.
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