Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the influence of education on American novelists can be more detrimental to their creativity than alcohol.
Gore Vidal's quote highlights a provocative perspective on the impact of formal education, specifically in the field of writing. It implies that the conventional teaching methods and structures associated with literature can stifle originality and creativity, ultimately hindering the development of the novelist's voice and perspective. Instead of fostering free thought and innovation, education may impose constraints that can limit artistic expression, comparable to the effects of excessive drinking.
In practice
Using this quote at a writer's workshop to encourage participants to think outside the box.
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.
Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.
When we make college more affordable, we make the American dream more achievable.
People who love ideas must have a love of words. They will take a vivid interest in the clothes that words wear.
I'm a big advocate of a work-for-pay setup rather than an allowance that isn't attached to chores - it's a great way to impart the value of money to your children.
Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature. A child under the age of fifteen should confine its attention either to subjects like mathematics, in which errors of judgment are impossible, or to subjects in which they are not very dangerous, like languages, natural science, history, etc.
In the United States we have concentrated tremendous sums of money on the educational plant, seemingly with the idea that the right number of buildings will turn out the right number of graduates. Yet the teachers who actually instruct the future citizens of our country are more often than not miserably paid. If in the future we find ourselves with a lot of fourth-rate citizens, we have only ourselves to blame.
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