The Art of Tetman Callis

“Writers accept the limitation of words at least in theory, though they struggle to circumvent it in practice; they know that words serve two masters, the purity of the work of art and the impurity of common use. Words used with pure intention drag impure allegiance into the sanctuary of art; there is no help for this situation. The novelist makes his fiction, and the normal means is by reciting a story, because stories, like lives, are temporal and they must begin and end. If he wants something more subtle, the novelist secretes it in the texture of his story. In return for the story, the available part of fiction, the novelist claims the right to qualify his report, insinuating doubts and hesitations where the story would run boldly from one episode to the next.” – Denis Donoghue, The Sovereign Ghost