“The artist is above all else a sick person, in any case an unstable one.”
“Are these real concerns? Is this work convincing?”
Behind all the other questions one asks oneself about a novel, these are perhaps the most determining—and the most slippery. Probably we should accept that in many cases a straight yes-or-no answer just won’t be possible. There will be shades of gray. Still, the matter of whether a work of fiction—its setting and characters, its interactions and preoccupations, etc.—feels “authentic” may have much to do with how we ultimately judge it, whether we like it, whether we take it seriously. But what do we mean by authenticity? Since we can hardly ask for documentary accuracy from fiction, what is it exactly we’re looking for?
Read In Search of Authenticity by Tim Parks in the NYRB blog.
Meanwhile, here’s a murky tale of a Stanford student, her Silicon Valley mentor, her overly involved mother and “psychological kidnapping”. Not a ringing endorsement of the human race.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
