Many of the writers I admire - Melville, Dickinson, Kafka - were virtually invisible during their lifetimes. Art, I think, often has to dance around in the void.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination.
The most valuable writers are those in whom we find not themselves, or ourselves, or the fugitive era of their lifetimes, but the common vision of all times.
But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art.
Writing changed my life. It has an existential dimension, and that's the same for every writer. Every artist has a moment of awakening, of happening upon an idea that grabs hold of you, regardless of whether you are a painter or a writer.
I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity.
My father had an invisible job outside of the house; I didn't know what he did. But my kids were privy to the ups and downs of a writer's life.
For writers and artists, it's always a balancing act between wanting to be the center of attention and wanting to be invisible and watch what's going on.
Real novelists, those we admire, those we consider timeless in their language and character and scene, those who receive accolades for inventive language and form, have writing lives we imagine in specific ways.
I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.
When I start to write, words have become physical presence. It was to see if I could bring that private world to life that found its first expression through reading. I really dislike the romantic notion of the artist.