Barbara at work, Photo: Marianne Barcellona

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Every novelist ought to invent his own technique, that is the fact of the matter.  Every novel worthy of the name is like another planet, whether large or small, which has its own laws just as it has its own flora and fauna.  Thus, Faulkner’s technique is certainly the best one with which to produce Faulkner’s world, and Kafka’s nightmare has produced its own myths that make it communicable.  Benjamin Constant, Stendahl, Eugene Fromentin, Jaques Riviere, Radiquet, all used different techniques, took different liberties, and set themselves different tasks. The work of art itself, whether its title is Adolphe, Lucien Leuwen, Dominique, Le Diable au corps or A la Recherché du temps perdu, is the solution to the problem of technique.  

Francois Mauriac in The Paris Review Interviews:  Writers at Work 1st Series, edited and with an Introduction by Malcolm Cowley

Comments are welcome!