You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?
Interpretation
This quote suggests a concern about the lack of readership rather than the absence of talented writers.
Gore Vidal's quote highlights an underlying issue in the literary world: while people often lament the absence of great writers, it is equally important to recognize the diminishing interest in reading. It implies that the vitality of literature depends on an engaged and attentive readership, and without them, even the greatest writers may struggle to find their place in a society that values other forms of entertainment over reading.
In practice
During a literary event, one might say, 'Gore Vidal once pointed out the real concern lies not in the absence of great writers but in the lack of readers.'
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.
The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.
Some Native American writers enjoy being called Native American writers.
What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim 'You know exactly what I mean!' depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.
Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.
He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . He was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. . . . He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating in to clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some occasion is presented to him.
People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.
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