“Others complain that I don’t make the fundamental idea plain enough. This is every writer’s dilemma. Your form is your meaning, and your meaning dictates the form. But what you try to convey is reality—the fact plus the feeling, a total complex experience of a real world. If you make your scheme too explicit, the framework shows and the book dies. If you hide it too thoroughly, the book has no meaning and therefore no form. It is a mess.”

—  Joyce Cary

The Paris Review Interview: "Joyce Cary, The Art of Fiction," No. 7. Fall-Winter 1954-1955.

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Irish writer 1888–1957

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