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Authors John Barth

My imagination evidently delights in complexity for its own sake. Much of life, after all, and much of what we admire is essentially complex.

Tweet this quote Read the full piece at The Paris Review John Barth The Paris Review 1985

The art novel notwithstanding, I think most of us novelists have a sneaking wish that we could have it both ways, as Charles Dickens did and as Gabriel García Márquez sort of does—to write novels that are both shatteringly beautiful and at the same time popular.

Tweet this quote Read the full piece at The Paris Review John Barth The Paris Review 1985

Anne Tyler

My Baltimore neighbor Anne Tyler and I are maybe the only two writers left who actually write with a fountain pen. She made the remark that there’s something about the muscular movement of putting down script on the paper that gets her imagination back in the track where it was.

Read the full piece at The Paris Review John Barth The Paris Review 1985
Ernest Hemingway

You remember the old story of how Hemingway would always record the number of words he wrote each day. When I learned that detail about Hemingway I understood why the poor chap went bonkers and did himself in at the end.

Read the full piece at The Paris Review John Barth The Paris Review 1985
Henry James

…I prefer Henry James’s remark that the first obligation of the writer—which I would also regard as his last obligation—is to be interesting, to be interesting. To be interesting in one beautiful sentence after another. To be interesting; not to change the world.

Read the full piece at The Paris Review John Barth The Paris Review 1985
Gabriel García Márquez

Politically committed artists like Gabriel García Márquez give honest voice to their political passion at no great cost to the quality control of their art. But do they really change the world? I doubt it…

Read the full piece at The Paris Review John Barth The Paris Review 1985