To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Vidal compares famous novelists to skilled tradesmen, suggesting the adjective 'famous' is irrelevant to the noun 'novelist'.
- In plain terms
- Being a famous novelist is just a job like carpentry.
- What can you take from it?
- Greatness in art does not elevate it beyond craft.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Is writing a job or art?
- Does fame matter?
Another view
It equates creative writing with manual labor in a reductionist way.
More from Gore Vidal
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely…
Permalink to quote #26 Half the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for President - the same half?
Permalink to quote #28 Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the vir…
Permalink to quote #25
Related quotes
Art, it seems to me, should simplify finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole- so that all …
Willa CatherWilla Cather quote #95 What life means to me is to put the content of Shelley into the form of Zola. The proletarian writer is a writer with a purpose; he thinks no more of 'art for …
Upton SinclairUpton Sinclair quote #1 At present, I am a poet trying to be a soldier. To tell the truth, I am not interested in writing nowadays, except in so far as writing is the expression of so…
Joyce KilmerJoyce Kilmer quote #1