Carolina QuotesHow can we expect novelists to be moral, when their trade forces them to treat every end they meet as no more than an imperfect means to a novel?
Randall Jarrell Carolinian
Source
Chapter 1, p. 8
- work
- Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel]
- year
- 1954
- locator
- p. 8
Cite this record
“How can we expect novelists to be moral, when their trade fo…” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-B320ADD17D. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/b320add17d
More from Randall Jarrell
President Robbins was so well adjusted to his environment that sometimes you could not tell which was the environment and which was President Robbins.
We read our mail and counted up our missions — In bombers named for girls, we burned The cities we had learned about in school — Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among The people we had killed and never seen. When we lasted long enough they gave us medals; When we died they said, "Our casualties were low." They said, "Here are the maps"; we burned the cities.
A successful poem says what a poet wants to say, and more, with particular finality. The remarks he makes about his poems are incidental when the poem is good, or embarrassing or absurd when it is bad — and he is not permitted to say how the good poem is good, and may never know how the bad poem is bad. It is better to write about other people's poetry.