3
" In general, when a novel manipulates its material to conform to the pieties of the day, or alternatively to attack those pieties for no other reason than the visibility such an attack will generate, when its literary tropes are all too familiar, its clever prose reminiscent of other clever prose, then the compass needle is slipping away from true north . . . When, on the other hand, the author renounces some easy twist, some expected payoff, to take us into territory we didn’t expect but that nevertheless fits with the drift of the story, then the novel gains force and conviction. And when he or she does it again, telling quite a different story that is nevertheless driven by the same urgent tensions, then we are likely moving into the zone of authenticity. "
― Tim Parks
12
" Now, let’s imagine that we have been condemned for life to making, year in year out a burdensome and nearly impossible decision to which the world increasingly and inexplicably ascribes a crazy importance. How do we go about it? We look for some simple, rapid, and broadly acceptable criteria that will help us get this pain out of the way. And since, as Borges himself noted, aesthetics are difficult and require a special sensibility and long reflection while political affiliations are easier and quickly grasped, we begin to identify those areas of the world that have grabbed public attention, perhaps because of political turmoil or abuses of human rights; we find those authors who have already won a huge level of respect and possibly major prizes in the literary communities of these countries and who are outspokenly committed to the right side of whatever political divide we’re talking about, and we select them. "
― Tim Parks , Italian Neighbors
13
" The desire to convince oneself that writing is at least as alive as life itself, was recently reflected by a New York Times report on brain-scan research which claims that as we read about action in novels the areas of the brain that would be responsible for such action in real life—those that respond to sound, smell, texture, movement, etc.—are activated by words. 'The brain, it seems,' writes the journalist, 'does not make much distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life: in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.'
What nonsense! As if reading about sex or violence in any way prepared us for the experience of its intensity. "
― Tim Parks , Where I'm Reading From: The Changing World of Books
