Mr. Price and my immediate future.
Damn you, sir, for confirming my fears!
"A novel is, alas-- for better or worse, a function of
experience and maturity. Why are there almost no good novels written by
people in their early twenties or in their teens? There are almost none.
It's one of the great problems of teaching writing to young people-- you find
talented young people, eighteen or nineteen years old; you try to teach them
some skills; you try to teach them some awareness, some craft and discipline.
But you are also aware that you're getting them all dressed up with no place to
go for about ten years, because they've got to wait until they've settled into
their own characters and into their own lives, until they know something in
their lives; and then their good fiction, their good narrative, will begin to
come out of them in their middle and late twenties-- I believe often not until
their late thirties." - Reynolds Price.
At least I'm getting closer to the middle of my
twenties...
Ah, to hurry time, and then to frantically slam on the
breaks to deflect its onward march. Is 37 the top of the hill then? I wonder.
Hm. (Pause, reflect.) How Sisyphean.
...up and down the hill we go.
Posted: Saturday - October 01, 2005 at 01:18 PM
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