It is essential to naturalist doctrine that literature, to be good, must, finally, be the author's experience worked out literally.
Interpretation
Good literature must be rooted in the author's real-life experiences.
Gore Vidal emphasizes the importance of authenticity in literature, suggesting that for a work to be considered truly good, it should reflect the genuine experiences and truths of the author. This notion challenges writers to draw from their own lives, ensuring that their stories resonate with honesty and depth.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of story in writing workshops.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
Art is the expression of imagination, not the reproduction of reality.
Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.
I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically. A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength. [From a 1986 Fangoria interview]
I'd rather have just one person who reads and feels my work deeply than hundreds of thousands who read it but don't really care about.
This profusion of eccentricities, this dream in masonry and living rock is not a drop scene in a theatre, but a city in the world of reality.
Science studies the relations of things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.