90

increasingly revolts me. This element is mercifully absent from what is conventionally called good prose. in reading the latter, one is only conscious of the truth of what is being said, and it is this consciousness which I would like what I write to arouse in a reader first. Before he is aware of any of the qualities it may have, I want his reaction to be: 'that's true,' or, better still, 'that's true: now, why didn't I think of that myself?' To secure this effect I am prepared to sacrifice a great many poetic pleasures and excitements. At the same time, I want what I write to be poetry as Robert Frost defines it, namely, untranslatable speech. The ideal at which I aim is a style which shall combine the drab sober truthfulness of prose with a poetic uniqueness of expression."

p 418-419

91

"A lot of trouble could be saved at obscenity trials if the book were given to the jury and the male members were asked to stand up. If they really had erections, it would be safe to assume that the book would be likely to deprove and corrupt."

p 425

... One secret is liable to be revealed in the place of another that is harder to tell, and the substitute secret, when nakedly exposed, is often the more appalling.

21 p. NYT Book Review - Eudora Welty 1983, Oct. 9

Gore Vidal - on W.D. Howells - NYR of Books. 10-27-83

... an aversion to irregular sexuality was not apt to endear him to a later generation which, once it could not put sex into the novel, proceeded to leave out almost everything else. Where the late-nineteenth-century realistic novel might be said to deal with social climbing, the twentieth-century novel has dealt with sexual-climbing, an activity rather easier to do than to write about. p 50