
A Weapon for Readers by Tim Parks (2014) - Tomte
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/12/03/weapon-for-readers/
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Tadlos
Quote: We have too much respect for the printed word, too little awareness of
the power words hold over us. We allow worlds to be conjured up for us with
very little concern for the implications. We overlook glaring incongruities.
We are suckers for alliteration, assonance, and rhythm. We rejoice over
stories, whether fiction or “documentary,” whose outcomes are flagrantly
manipulative, self-serving, or both. Usually both. If a piece of writing
manifests the stigmata of literature— symbols, metaphors, unreliable
narrators, multiple points of view, structural ambiguities—we afford it
unlimited credit. With occasional exceptions, the only “criticism” brought to
such writing is the kind that seeks to elaborate its brilliance, its
cleverness, its creativity. What surprised me most when I first began
publishing fiction myself was how much at every level a novelist can get away
with.

