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.
We're told that independent film lovers... folks that are used to watching art house films, won't come out and see a film with black people in it - I've been told that in rooms, big rooms, studio rooms, and I know that's not true.
I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space. It doesn't matter if it differs from mine, as long as it comes from the painting, which has its own integrity and intensity.
I'm a storyteller who wants to tell untold, meaningful, universal stories in unforgettable ways. I want to do it all, study it all, and find my place in it.
The commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that "offensive" is frequently but a synonym for "unusual;" and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come more or less as a shocking surprise.
Nothing is contrived. At night, the clothes should pour like liquid over the body.
Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.
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