W. Somerset Maugham, Preface to Collected stories Volume 2 -
There is a point I want to make about these stories. The reader will notice that many stories are written in the first person singular. That is a literary convention which is as old as hills... Its object is of course to achieve credibility, for when someone tells you what he states has happened to himself you are more likely to believe that he is telling the truth than when he tells you what happened to somebody else. It has besides a merit from storyteller’s point of view that he need only tell you what he knows for a fact and can leave to your imagination what he doesn’t know or couldn’t know. ........But the I who writes is just as much a character in story as the other persons with whom it is concerned. He may be the hero or he may be an onlooker or a confidant. But he is a character. The writer who uses this device is writing fiction and if he makes the I of his story a little quicker on the uptake, a little more level headed, a little wittier, a little wiser than he, the writer, really is, the reader must show indulgence. He must remember that author is not drawing a faithful portrait of himself, but creating a character for the particular purpose of his story.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the underground -
The author of these Notes, and Notes themselves, are both, of course, imaginary. All the same, if we take into consideration the conditions that have shaped our society, people like the writer not only may, but must, exist in society. I have tried to present to the public in a more striking form than is usual a character belonging to the very recent past, a representative figure from a generation still surviving.
Franz Kafka on being a writer, "Letter to Max Brod." (Qtd. in Corngold 73) –
But what is to be a writer? Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward but its price? During the night the answer was transparently clear to me. It is a reward for the service to devil. This descent to the dark powers, the unbinding of spirits by nature bound, dubious embraces and whatever else may go on below, of which one no longer knows anything above ground, when in the sunlight one writes stories. Perhaps there is another kind of writing, I know only this one; in the night, when anxiety does not let me sleep, I know only this.
There is a point I want to make about these stories. The reader will notice that many stories are written in the first person singular. That is a literary convention which is as old as hills... Its object is of course to achieve credibility, for when someone tells you what he states has happened to himself you are more likely to believe that he is telling the truth than when he tells you what happened to somebody else. It has besides a merit from storyteller’s point of view that he need only tell you what he knows for a fact and can leave to your imagination what he doesn’t know or couldn’t know. ........But the I who writes is just as much a character in story as the other persons with whom it is concerned. He may be the hero or he may be an onlooker or a confidant. But he is a character. The writer who uses this device is writing fiction and if he makes the I of his story a little quicker on the uptake, a little more level headed, a little wittier, a little wiser than he, the writer, really is, the reader must show indulgence. He must remember that author is not drawing a faithful portrait of himself, but creating a character for the particular purpose of his story.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the underground -
The author of these Notes, and Notes themselves, are both, of course, imaginary. All the same, if we take into consideration the conditions that have shaped our society, people like the writer not only may, but must, exist in society. I have tried to present to the public in a more striking form than is usual a character belonging to the very recent past, a representative figure from a generation still surviving.
Franz Kafka on being a writer, "Letter to Max Brod." (Qtd. in Corngold 73) –
But what is to be a writer? Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward but its price? During the night the answer was transparently clear to me. It is a reward for the service to devil. This descent to the dark powers, the unbinding of spirits by nature bound, dubious embraces and whatever else may go on below, of which one no longer knows anything above ground, when in the sunlight one writes stories. Perhaps there is another kind of writing, I know only this one; in the night, when anxiety does not let me sleep, I know only this.
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