The Saunterer

Bernard Malamud on how novels convey human truth

Here is how, he says:    

    For we have to remember what the novel is. Made by the imagination for the imagination, it is an illusion come full circle—a very exclusive thing, for all it seems to include a good deal of the world. It was wholly for the sake of illusion, made by art out of, and in order to show, and to be, some human truth, that the novelist took all he knew with him and made that leap in the dark.

    (Quoted from page 65 of First Person Singular: Writers on Their Craft, compiled by Joyce Carol Oates. Ontario Review Press, 1983.)
    For a brief biography of Bernard Malamud, click here. For images of or relating to Bernard Malamud, click here.

Henry David Thoreau on what makes the best literature

    Reading Henry David Thoreau’s journals this summer, we liked the wit of this entry made at age 33:

     Nov. 16. In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is only another name for tameness. It is the untamed, uncivilized, free, and wild thinking in Hamlet, in the Iliad, and in all the scriptures and mythologies that delights us—not learned in the schools, not refined and polished by art. A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvellous, ambrosial and fertile, as a fungus or a lichen.

    (Quoted from page 43 of The Journal: 1837-1861, by Henry David Thoreau, Damion Searls editor, New York Review Books, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Henry David Thoreau, click here. For images of or relating to Henry David Thoreau, click here.

Jean Cocteau on what makes a home

    For a house to be home, it must have a soul, and Jean Cocteau thought the surest way for it to have one is this:

    I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.

    (Quoted from page 189 of Making Rounds with Oscar, by David Dosa. Hyperion, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Jean Cocteau, click here. For images of or relating to Jean Cocteau, click here.

 

Vincent Van Gogh on what the word “artist” means

    By Vincent Van Gogh’s perspective, you don’t have to be a painter to be an artist. Einstein, for example, was an artist. Hear Van Gogh:    

    Mauve takes offense at my having said, “I am an artist—which I do not take back, because the word of course included the meaning: always seeking without absolutely finding. It is just the converse of saying, “I know it, I have found it.” As far as I know that word means: “I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.”

    (Quoted from page 73 of The Way to Write, by John Fairfax and John Moat. St. Martin’s Press, 1981.)
    For a brief biography of Vincent Van Gogh, click here. For images of or relating to Vincent Van Gogh, click here.

Leonardo da Vinci on how to increase your love of an object

    Get to know the object more fully he says:

    In truth great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you know it but little you will be able to love it only a little or not at all.

    (Quoted from page 20 of The Way to Write, by John Fairfax and John Moat. St. Martin’s Press, 1981.)
    For a brief biography of Leonardo da Vinci, click here. For images of or relating to Leonardo da Vinci, click here.

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Bernard Malamud’s advice to writers

    An interviewer once asked Bernard Malamud about his work habits in writing, and he gave them in terms of the following general advice:    

    There’s no one way—there’s so much drivel about this subject. You’re who you are, not Fitzgerald or Thomas Wolfe. You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter. If he or she is not disciplined, no sympathetic magic will help. The trick is to make time—not steal it—and produce the fiction. If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.

    (Quoted from page 45 of First Person Singular: Writers on Their Craft, compiled by Joyce Carol Oates. Ontario Review Press, 1983.)
    For a brief biography of Bernard Malamud, click here. For images of or relating to Bernard Malamud, click here.

Henry David Thoreau on the nature of hard work

    Reading Henry David Thoreau’s journals this summer, we liked the wit of this entry of March 31, 1842, made at age 24:

     March 31. Thursday. The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. He is only earnest to secure the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate the value of the husk. Why should the hen set all day? She can lay but one egg, and besides she will not have picked up materials for a new one. Those who work much do not work hard.

    (Quoted from page 26 of The Journal: 1837-1861, by Henry David Thoreau, Damion Searls editor, New York Review Books, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Henry David Thoreau, click here. For images of or relating to Henry David Thoreau, click here.

Flannery O’Connor’s reason for writing

    The act of writing gives you ideas. As Flannery O’Connor puts it,

    I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.

    (Quoted from page 250 of First Person Singular: Writers on Their Craft, compiled by Joyce Carol Oates. Ontario Review Press, 1983.)
    For a brief biography of Flannery O’Connor, click here. For images of or relating to Flannery O’Connor, click here.

On Fred Astaire ‘s originality and perfectionism

We Sauntered upon this in Music in the USA, edited by Judith Tick. Oxford University Press, 2008, page 524; its source is Martin Williams’ Hidden in Plain Sight: An Examination of the American Arts, Oxford University Press, 1992.):    

    What Fred Astaire accomplished is more significant than it may seem. When Baryshnikov decides he wants to become a dancer, he goes to a teacher and he is told, well, yes, you must learn this movement and that one; and learn this and the other technique; and if you learn them all well enough you will be a dancer. And that means—let us be clear about this—you will learn to dance in the tradition of eighteenth-century French courtly dance, a highly stylized craft to say the least.
    Astaire, in his totally unpretentious way, obviously did not want to dance like an eighteenth-century European. He undertook to dance like a twentieth-century American; he wanted to put our lives, our feelings, our experiences into dance. Who was to teach him how to do that? No one of course. He had to find out for himself what that meant, and that was a large and—if we admit it—culturally significant task. Astaire took the then-young traditions of American vaudeville and musical comedy dance in which he had grown up as his point of departure. And from bits of ballroom and ballroom-driven “speciality” dance, from black tap dancing and (yes) some bits of classical ballet—from any sources that seemed appropriate to him—he fashioned his art.
    Furthermore, Astaire had to learn what it meant to dance like an American named Fred Astaire, and there I think is where the truly democratic element entered. For an artist of his potential range and depth, learning to dance like Fred Astaire was, again, a sizeable task. It was also a task which he clearly undertook with seriousness and discipline and with an unpretentious spirit of discovery and delight that always showed in his results.

    For a brief video of Fred Astaire demonstrating perfect timing, click here. For 71- year old Fred Astaire dancing in 1970, click here (he cuts loose two minutes after the video begins).
    For a brief biography of Fred Astaire, click here. For images of or relating to Fred Astaire, click here.

 

 

Ann Patchett on how books can change one’s life

    Here is her story:

    After I read “Charlotte’s Web,” I become so obsessed with pigs that my stepfather got me one for my ninth birthday. It was because of that pig that I became a vegetarian. That’s impact.

    (Quoted from page 8 of The New York Times Book Review, November 3, 2013.)
    For a brief biography of Ann Patchett, click here. For images of or relating to Ann Patchett, click here.