Re-reading John Gardner--On Becoming a Novelist-

On re-reading John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist.

This is my all time favorite 150 page book.  John Gardner never fails to say something insightful and the book is full of real zingers:

"Only a talent that does not exist can't be improved."

".  .  . the Christian Pollyanna mask--why the mask turns up more often in writing than in .  .  . speaking .  .  . I cannot say, unless it has to do with how writing is taught in our early years, as a form of good manners  .  .  .  the Pollyanna mask, if it cannot be torn off, will spell ruin for the novelist.  .  .  .  they lose the power to see accurately, and they lose the power to communicate with any but those who see and feel in the same benevolently distorted way.  .  .  .  No one with a distorted view of reality can write good novels, because as we read we compare fictional worlds against the real world."  p. 12
.  .  .
.  .  .  Pollyanna and disPollyanna work in the same ways, leading him to miss and simplify experience and cutting him off from all but fellow believers.  Marxist language can have the same effect, or the argot of the ashram, or computer talk .  .  .  or the weary metaphors of the business and law world."  p.  14.