A novel, I think, is partly about the contemporary and partly about the eternal, and it's the balance of that that's difficult to achieve.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.
Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.
Some critics said, 'Hey, why are you writing historical novels?' I say they're not historical, they're contemporary, because people walking around who lived through this, even a little bit, they carry it inside. The contemporary isn't just what you can see now.
But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.
Consciousness - that, to me, is the theme of the modern novel.
I write contemporary fiction, and that is what my readers want to read.
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
I think the novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers. The novel receives streams of science, philosophy, poetry and contains all of these; it's not simply telling a story.
The idea that an author can extricate her or his own ongoing life experience from the tale being written is a conceit of very little worth.
Modernist fiction is tied to problems of writers. Self-glorifying. Existential struggle. This has not been a big part of genre writing.
No opposing quotes found.