Goodreads
asked
David B. Lentz:
If you could travel to any fictional book world, where would you go and what would you do there?
David B. Lentz
This is a truly germinal question: thank you for asking.
I want to say Jonathan Swift's fictional world of the Houyhnhnms visited by Gulliver. Or the Parisian salons of Proust in his day. Or the house on the street where you live.
But the whole truth is that I would go to "The House of Writers" portrayed by EJ Nicholls and for which I have written a review at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
There I would aspire to live on the first floor among the poor, obsessed and deluded devils seeking to write High Quality Literary Fiction (HQLF).
Would it appear a vanity to quote myself from this book review?
I agree with you: it would. Nevertheless:
"At least, if the prophecy of the scriptures are fulfilled, then the writers of HQLF will have somewhere safe and warm to take them in (prepositional ending). Somewhere to commiserate with others of their petty and miserable ilk. It sounds like Paradise to me. How I yearn for it. Grant me the steaming porridge, the zesty and savory intellectual comfort food of The House of Writers any day. What an upgrade it would be to anyone writing HQLF in this age. Ah, but this isn't about me, is it? It is about serious literature. And its place in the civilization of humanity well after we've been put out to pasture. Will humanity in 2050 miss HQLF? Don't make me laugh. The genre will be long since gone. And its writers will be exposed for the egoists they most surely were. In 2100 will the intelligentsia long for the Golden Age of HQLF among the overgrown ruins of The House of Writers? Surely, we are blessed to have the prophetic vision of Nicholls to imagine it. For is he not the Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah of all writers of HQLF wandering aimlessly among the heatherclad heaths and heathcliffs of the highlands of ScotCall?"
Am I asking too much?
I seek only to abide among the writers of HQLF in The House of Writers.
I am, aren't I?
Yet, strangely enough, The House of Writers feels like home.
I want to say Jonathan Swift's fictional world of the Houyhnhnms visited by Gulliver. Or the Parisian salons of Proust in his day. Or the house on the street where you live.
But the whole truth is that I would go to "The House of Writers" portrayed by EJ Nicholls and for which I have written a review at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
There I would aspire to live on the first floor among the poor, obsessed and deluded devils seeking to write High Quality Literary Fiction (HQLF).
Would it appear a vanity to quote myself from this book review?
I agree with you: it would. Nevertheless:
"At least, if the prophecy of the scriptures are fulfilled, then the writers of HQLF will have somewhere safe and warm to take them in (prepositional ending). Somewhere to commiserate with others of their petty and miserable ilk. It sounds like Paradise to me. How I yearn for it. Grant me the steaming porridge, the zesty and savory intellectual comfort food of The House of Writers any day. What an upgrade it would be to anyone writing HQLF in this age. Ah, but this isn't about me, is it? It is about serious literature. And its place in the civilization of humanity well after we've been put out to pasture. Will humanity in 2050 miss HQLF? Don't make me laugh. The genre will be long since gone. And its writers will be exposed for the egoists they most surely were. In 2100 will the intelligentsia long for the Golden Age of HQLF among the overgrown ruins of The House of Writers? Surely, we are blessed to have the prophetic vision of Nicholls to imagine it. For is he not the Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah of all writers of HQLF wandering aimlessly among the heatherclad heaths and heathcliffs of the highlands of ScotCall?"
Am I asking too much?
I seek only to abide among the writers of HQLF in The House of Writers.
I am, aren't I?
Yet, strangely enough, The House of Writers feels like home.
More Answered Questions
William III
asked
David B. Lentz:
What, if any, are your views on revising non-academic fiction? Should a work of fiction, once published, be considered 'done' or is it open for revision? E.g. what would be the merits and/or pitfalls of Thomas Pynchon re-releasing 'Gravity's Rainbow' with additions/omissions?
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