Fiction Is The Only Way To Redeem

Saul Bellow Says, Funny Enough, What French Think Of Your Work Is Tremendously Important. And It Is. It's More Than What The Italians, The Spanish, And The Germans Think. Somehow It's Still Got That Cultural Primacy. I Feel That Too: To Get Praised In France Is Better Than To Get Praised Anywhere Else.

It Is Quite An Achievement. People Of Liberal Sympathies, Stupefied By Relativism, Have Become The Apologists For A Creedal Wave That Is Racist, Misogynist, Homophobic, Imperialist, And Genocidal. To Put It Another Way, They Are Up The Arse Of Those That Want Them Dead.

It Sounds Schmaltzy To Say, But Fiction Is Much More To Do With Love Than People Admit Or Acknowledge. The Novelist Has To Not Only Love His Characters - Which You Do, Without Even Thinking About It, Just As You Love Your Children. But Also To Love The Reader, And That's What I Mean By The Pleasure Principle.

You Never Can Tell, Though, With Suicide Notes, Can You? In The Planetary Aggregate Of All Life, There Are Many More Suicide Notes Than There Are Suicides. They're Like Poems In That Respect, Suicide Notes: Nearly Everyone Tries Their Hand At Them Some Time, With Or Without The Talent. We All Write Them In Our Heads. Usually The Note Is The Thing. You Complete It, And Then Resume Your Time Travel. It Is The Note And Not The Life That Is Cancelled Out. Or The Other Way Round. Or Death. You Never Can Tell, Though, Can You, With Suicide Notes.

The Children Of The Nuclear Age, I Think, Were Weakened In Their Capacity To Love. Hard To Love, When You're Bracing Yourself For Impact. Hard To Love, When The Loved One, And The Lover, Might At Any Instant Become Blood And Flames, Along With Everybody Else.