| The rest of the quotes are from letters John Steinbeck wrote to his editors as he worked on the "translation" of the Malorey version of the King Arthur legend. These are all in the appendix at the end of the book. Arthur is not a character...And here it might be well to consider that Jesus isn't either, nor is Buddha. Perhaps the large symbol figures can't be characters, for if they were, we wouldn't identify with them by substitututing our own. p.299 Nothing is so dangerous as the theories of a half-assed or half-informed scholar. p.301 A novelist not only puts down a story but he is the story. He is each one of the characters in a greater or a less degree. And because he is usually a moral man in intention and honest in his apporoach, he sets things down as truly as he can. He is limited by his experience, his knowledge, his observation and his feelings. p.304 ...the novelist is a rearranger of nature so that it makes an understandable patter, and a novelist is also a teacher, but a novelist is primarily a man and subject to all of a man's faults and virtues, fears and braveries. p.305 In fact the only really unproductive times I can remember were those when there were no pressures. If my record has any meaning at all, it is that pressures are necessary to my creative survival -- an inelegant, even a nauseating thought, but there it is. p.314 I tell all these old stories, but they are not what I want to tell. I only know how I want people to feel when I tell them. p.335 In [the Arthur stories are found all of]...the cruelty, and lust, and murder and childlike self-interest. They are all here. But he [Malory] does not let them put out the sun. Side by side with them are generosity and courage and greatness and the huge sadness of tragedy rather than the little meanness of frustration...No matter how brilliantly one part of life is painted, if the sun goes out, that man has not seen the whole world. Day and night both exist. To ignore the one or the other is to split time in two and choose one like a the short stick in a match game...An artist should be open on all sides to every kind of light and darkness. But our age almost purposely closes all windows, draws all shades and then later screams to a psychiatrist for a light. I have a friend...who bases his trouble on having been rejected by a woman. And he completely forget the literally hundreds of women who accepted him...I've been rejected by some, but my God some wonderful ones have accepted me. To forget that would be foolish and to brood on the other would be like brooding because everyone didn't like my looks, I'm grateful that some people do. p.338 The people of legend are not people as we know them. They are figures. Christ is not a person, he is a figure. Buddha is a squatting symbol...As a person Jesus is a fool. At any time in the story he could have stopped the process or changed the direction. He has only one human incident in the whole sequence -- the lama sabach-thani on the cross when the pain was too great. It is the nature of the hero to be a fool...He would be small and mean if he were clever. Cleverness, even wisdom is the property of the villian in all myths. p.343 There are two kinds of humans on the creative level. The great mass of the more creative do not think. They are deeply convinced that the good world is past. Status quo people, feeling they cannot go back to the perfect time, at least fight not to go too far from it. And then there is creative man who believes in perfectibility, in progression -- he is rare, he is not very effective but he surely is different from the others. Laughter and tears -- both muscular convulsions not unlike each other, both make the eyes water and the nose run and both afford relieft after they are over. Marijuana stimulates induced laughter and the secondary of alcohol false tears, and both a hangover. p.349-350 Think if you will of Jehovah of the Old Testament. There's a God who couldn't get the job as apprentice in General Motors. He makes a mistake and then gets mad and breaks his toys. Think of Job. It almost seems that dopiness is required in literature. Only the bad guys can be smart. Could it be that there is a built-in hatred and fear of intelligence in the speices so that the heroes must be stupid? Cleverness equates with evil almost invariably. p.350 The best way is the simplest but it takes an awful lot of thought to be simple. p.356 |