“It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief.”

"The Novel Alive or Dead," A Gathering of Fugitives: New Essays (1956)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief." by Lionel Trilling?
Lionel Trilling photo
Lionel Trilling 30
American academic 1905–1975

Related quotes

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Theodore Roszak photo

“It now requires such artful speculation to maintain an orthodox faith in chance. Skeptics, it would seem, are willing to believe anything.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Source: The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science (1999), Ch.9 Deep Community
Context: Or perhaps... there is actually an infinity of universes among which only this one has by sheer accident produced the conditions for life and mind. It now requires such artful speculation to maintain an orthodox faith in chance. Skeptics, it would seem, are willing to believe anything.

Norman Mailer photo

“Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate
Lewis H. Lapham photo
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien photo

“The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed.”

On Fairy-Stories (1939)
Context: The story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed.

Lewis Mumford photo

“Now life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for the training of a mere beginner.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

The Conduct Of Life (1951)
Context: Now life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for the training of a mere beginner. In life, we must begin to give a public performance before we have acquired even a novice's skill; and often our moments of seeming mastery are upset by new demands, for which we have acquired no preparatory facility. Life is a score that we play at sight, not merely before we have divined the intentions of the composer, but even before we have mastered our instruments; even worse, a large part of the score has been only roughly indicated, and we must improvise the music for our particular instrument, over long passages. On these terms, the whole operation seems one of endless difficulty and frustration; and indeed, were it not for the fact that some of the passages have been played so often by our predecessors that, when we come to them, we seem to recall some of the score and can anticipate the natural sequence of the notes, we might often give up in sheer despair. The wonder is not that so much cacophony appears in our actual individual lives, but that there is any appearance of harmony and progression.

Wallace Stevens photo
Pauline Kael photo
Gillian Anderson photo

“People have been willing to accept that the government is lying to us, but [are now also] more willing to accept the concept of aliens and other life forms. There's just a slew of stuff out there right now. It's been people's closet belief system, and now it's coming out of the closet.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Kate O'Hare, Tribune Media Services (December 2, 1994) "The Voice of Reason Speaks on FOX's 'X-Files'", St. Louis Post-Dispatch, p. 10F.
1990s

Related topics