Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic
Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
On Writing Poetry (1995)
Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic
Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer
It's a roll call of dead books.
Salon interview (1997)
“A book, once it is printed and published, becomes individual.”
James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author
"A Note on Cabellian Harmonics" in Cabellian Harmonics (April 1928)
Context: A book, once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book "means" thereafter, perforce, — both grammatically and actually, — whatever meaning this or that reader gets out of it.
Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress
<!-- [http://www.elainedundy.com/stranger.html DEAD LINK --> "A Stranger Comes to Town" (c. 2001)
Context: I'd always prided myself on how unlike my books were from each other in settings and subject matter. But not until late in my career did I realize that a single thread ran through them, that I'd used the same strategy to catch the reader's attention. It is the old Western movie gimmick: A Stranger Comes to Town. I am that Stranger. Together with the reader I will discover what's going on in that town whether it be Paris, London, New York, Sydney, Tupelo, Ferriday — or in a women's federal prison. And eventually we will make sense of it.
Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist
"Unnecessary Roughness" (1971), p. 150
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)
Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic
Interview with Richard B. Sale (1969)
Context: But to poetry — You have to be willing to waste time. When you start a poem, stay with it and suffer through it and just think about nothing, not even the poem. Just be there. It's more of a prayerful state than writing the novels is. A lot of the novel is in doing good works, as it were, not praying. And the prayerful state is just being passive with it, mumbling, being around there, lying on the grass, going swimming, you see. Even getting drunk. Get drunk prayerfully, though.
Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) Novelist, short story writer, essayist (1854-1909)
The Novel: What It Is (1893)