I've never felt powerful enough to write a true political novel, or deeply knowledgeable enough to draw a character like, say, Tolstoy's Prince Kutuzov.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views.
It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.
I don't believe there can be a poetic novel without political consciousness. I have a strong political conscience.
I don't like novels that tie everything up in a plot-y way. I always think that's not really true of life, particularly of people in power.
It makes me nuts, the idea that if you put a political struggle at the heart of your book, then it has to be that the author - me - is trying in some way to push my views onto my readers.
I have the power to write these books where I invent characters that I really like, and it gets to come out the way they want it to come out, and I get to make it happen.
This is not Tolstoy. I don't want to know what critics and professors think of what I'm writing. It might hurt my feelings.
I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.
I am of the opinion that I am not a political writer, and, moreover, that as far as true literature is concerned, there actually are no political writers. I think that my writing is no more political than ancient Greek theatre. I would have become the writer I am in any political regime.
I don't see that books can be written without political context - not if they're relevant and ambitious.