I have never really wanted to be a novelist. For me the word carries a load of bad connotations –– like author and literature and reviewer, only worse. It suggests something factitious as well as fictitious, insipidly entertaining; train-journeyish. One can't imagine a 'novelist's' ever saying what he actually means or feels –– one can hardly even imagine his meaning or feeling.
These words have bad connotations because they suggest that in some way writing and being a writer aren't central human activities.
I've always wanted to write (in this order) poems, philosophy, and only then novels. I wouldn't even put the whole category of activity –– writing –– first on my list of ambitions. My first ambition has always been to alter the society I live in; that is, to affect other lives. I think I begin to agree with Marx-Lenin: writing is a very second rate way of bringing about a revolution. But I recognize that all I am capable of is writing. I am a writer. Not a doer.
Society, existing among other human beings, challenges me, so I have to choose my weapon. I choose writing; but the thing that comes first is that I am challenged.
I Write Therefore I Am (1964)
Use the link below to visit the website of British novelist and former teacher JOHN FOWLES (1926–2005):
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