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Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements: Non-fiction, 1990-2013 QUOTES

Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements: Non-fiction, 1990-2013 QUOTES

1 " In an age when politicians are judged first of all on personality, when the public assumes all of them to be deceitful, and when it’s easier and much more pleasurable to laugh about a political issue than to think about it, Johnson’s apparent self-deprecating honesty and lack of concern for his own dignity were bound to make him a hit. "

― Jonathan Coe , Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements: Non-fiction, 1990-2013

2 " believe there are infinite ways of telling stories – linear and non-linear, multiple viewpoints and single viewpoints, first and third person, and so forth. An infinity of choice faces you whenever embarking upon a new work. However, I no longer believe, as Johnson believed, for instance, that the novel must be radically reinvented as it progresses or otherwise it will die. If you look at the tradition that he felt himself a part of, it’s odd in a way, because Tristram Shandy in particular so explodes all the notions of traditional fictional writing and all the possibilities of experimental writing right at the infancy of the British novel that Johnson’s view that you can build upon that seems wrong. "

― Jonathan Coe , Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements: Non-fiction, 1990-2013

3 " Where are the laughs in massacre, famine and climate change, exactly? What’s so funny about the Middle East, North Korea and Afghanistan? Who’s going to chuckle when they pick up the London Review of Books and find John Lanchester arguing, convincingly as always, that the banking habits of the British people pose a greater threat to their own security than terrorism? "

― Jonathan Coe , Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements: Non-fiction, 1990-2013