“Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.”

"Society, Morality and the Novel" (1957), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 699.

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 "Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form…" by Ralph Ellison?
Ralph Ellison photo
Ralph Ellison 82
American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer 1914–1994

Related quotes

Habib Bourguiba photo

“You are wrong. The state and its existence are essential before everything else. All this preoccupation with liberty is not serious.”

Habib Bourguiba (1903–2000) Tunisian politician

[TUNISIA: No Time for Democracy, TIME, Monday, Sept. 29, 1958, 2, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,821168-2,00.html, September 6, 2011]

Yves Klein photo

“In spite of the impressive success of quantum mechanics in describing atomic physics, it was immediately clear after its formulation that its relativistic extension was not free of difficulties.”

Luis Álvarez-Gaumé Spanish physicist

Source: An Invitation to Quantum Field Theory (2012), Ch. 1 : Why Do We Need Quantum Field Theory After All?

Stepan Bandera photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The New York Times Magazine (9 October 1960)

John Tyndall photo

“Knowledge once gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate boundaries.”

John Tyndall (1820–1893) British scientist

On the Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation, p. 7.
Scientific addresses (1870)

John Keats photo

“Every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to Benjamin Bailey (March 13, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Théophile Gautier photo

“Art for Art's Sake means, for its adepts, the pursuit of pure beauty – without any other consideration.”

L'art pour l'art signifie, pour les adeptes, un travail dégagé de toute préoccupation autre que celle du beau en lui-même.
L'art moderne (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1856) p. 151; F. W. Ruckstull Great Works of Art and What Makes Them Great (New York: Putnam, 1925) p. 299

Marshall McLuhan photo

“Every innovation scraps its immediate predecessor and retrieves still older figures – it causes floods of antiques or nostalgic art forms and stimulates the search for museum pieces.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1970s, The argument: causality in the electric world (1973)

Dag Hammarskjöld photo

Related topics