Very frequently the writer’s aim is to take apart the world where you have very little control, and replace it with language over which you can have some control. Destroy and then repair. I once wrote a passage in which I had the narrator say, “I want to rise so high that when I shit I won’t miss anybody.” But there are many motives for writing. Writing a book is such a complicated, long-term, difficult process that all of the possible motives that can funnel in will, and a great many of those motives will be base. If you can transform your particular baseness into something beautiful, that’s about the best you can make of your own obnoxious nature.
From a 1978 conversation between John Gardner and William H. Gass.
Biblioklept 
Reblogged this on Girl plus a Beer and commented:
I know this is the conundrum I’m usually faced with when it comes to writing stories of magic realism and fiction.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Life Misadventures.
LikeLike
Gass is always an inspiration; I don’t know a more perceptive critic thinking about writing in our time.
LikeLike