A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all apart from this.
Interpretation
A novelist experiences life in two ways: through reading and writing, and through their personal lived experiences.
Jane Smiley's quote highlights the dual existence of a novelist, emphasizing that their creative work is deeply intertwined with both their literary consumption and their personal experiences. To understand a novelist fully, one must recognize that their insights and narratives are shaped by their engagement with literature as well as the reality they observe and live within. This interconnection underscores the complexity of a writer's perspective, revealing how life and art are collaborators in the novel-writing process.
In practice
During a writer's workshop to illustrate the dual life of a novelist.
I say, when your hair turns gray and your children think they know who you are, do the thing that shakes up who you think you are, even who you had prided yourself on being. When all those around you say they simply don't recognize you any longer, that's the real compliment.
When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.
Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.
When I went to first grade and the other children said that their fathers were farmers, I simply didn't believe them. I agreed in order to be polite, but in my heart I knew that those men were impostors, as farmers and as fathers, too. In my youthful estimation, Laurence Cook defined both categories. To really believe that others even existed in either category was to break the First Commandment.
I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.
Somehow, knowing that Alzheimer's is coming mocks all one's aspirations - to tell stories, to think through certain issues as only a novel can do, to be recognised for one's accomplishments and hard work - in a way that old familiar death does not.
At the point where I'm trying to force something and it's not happening, and I'm getting frustrated with, say, writing a poem, I can go and pick up the brushes and start painting. At the point where the painting seems to not be going anywhere, I go and pick up the guitar.
Nobody sang better than my mom. That's why I've never even thought of singing for singing sake. I've always thought of a song as an acting piece, as a way to say something.
Every time you write a poem itβs apocalyptic. Youβre revealing who you really are to yourself.
Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use β do the work you want to see done.
It seems this is an age of clever critics who keep bewailing the fact that there are no works worthy of criticism.
When you're young, with less on the line, it's easier to be audacious, to experiment. So I introduced the concerns of my generation - politics, sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, etc. - to the comics page, which for many years caused a rolling furor.
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