Answers to your Questions

Abstract

Q: Don’t you think your opinions are somewhat sensational?

A: One of the charming habits to be observed in this wonderful democracy is the perfect composure with which the young are rude to the old, compensating themselves for their ignorance with an abuse that is innocently and assertively expressed, thus establishing an exquisite equality that eliminates the tiresome bother to have to acquire experience and makes the bawling infant identical to the senile octogenarian. Well, to answer you: as far as this book is concerned, there is not a single opinion in it that is exclusively mine. The ideas in it are derived from Henry James, Flaubert, and others, and each idea has either been preceded by or followed by or has an implied allusion to a quotation to make it quite clear that it bears the authority of someone whose own example in the creation of fiction leaves no doubt that he knows exactly what is being talked about and that his opinion on the matter is the correct one. Therefore, every opinion in this book is incontestably correct. The only purpose that I have served has been to save you the trouble of spending years discovering the sources for yourself. The really serious ones among you will go and read everything for yourselves and proceed with both humility and excitement to learn to be worthy of the art, but, the majority being inevitably composed of lazy sods on the lookout for a short cut, most students will be grateful that I have supplied them with what perhaps amounts to a dictionary of quotations with which they can go and impress the ignorant.