When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.
Interpretation
Audiences expect authors to be more entertaining in person than in their written work.
In this quote, Sinclair Lewis highlights the inherent pressure on authors to captivate their audiences during live presentations. He humorously suggests that people hope for a more engaging experience than what they find in the written form, reflecting on the different expectations for literary and live performance skills.
In practice
In a speech at a literary festival, a speaker quotes Sinclair Lewis to emphasize the importance of engaging with the audience.
Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which 'did a fellow good-- kept him in touch with Higher Things.
Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.
Writers kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.
She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.
Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes-it's still just work.
It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.
My second husband and I were going through a bitter divorce, and I didn't have the money for a fancy-pants attorney. I didn't know how to fight, so I'd lie awake at night and think of ways to kill him. But I knew I'd get caught, so I decided to put it in a book and get paid for it! I always think it's odd that a whole career came out of that homicidal impulse.
An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country.
When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.
Rum, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
Eighty is when you order a steak and the headwaiter puts it through the blender. Or when you wake up as many times during the night as Burt Reynolds, but not for the same reason.
It is a strange enterprise to make respectable people laugh.
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