It Is At Least Scientifically Respectable To

Marx, Darwin And Freud Are The Three Most Crashing Bores Of The Western World. Simplistic Popularization Of Their Ideas Has Thrust Our World Into A Mental Straitjacket From Which We Can Only Escape By The Most Anarchic Violence.

Experimental Novels Are Sometimes Terribly Clever And Very Seldom Read. But The Story That Appeals To The Child Sitting On Your Knee Is The One That Satisfies The Curiosity We All Have About What Happened Then, And Then, And Then. This Is The Final Restriction Put On The Technique Of Telling A Story. A Basic Thing Called Story Is Built Into The Human Condition. It's What We Are; It's Something To Which We React.

Biography Always Has Fulfiled This Role. Robinson Crusoe Is A Biography, As Is Tom Jones. You Can Go Through The Whole Range Of The Novel, And You Will Find It Is Biography. The Only Difference Between One Example And The Other Is That Sometimes It's A Partial Biography And Sometimes It's A Total Biography. Clarissa, For Example, Is A Partial Biography Of Clarissa And A Partial Biography Of Lovelace. In Other Words, It Doesn't Follow Lovelace From When He Is In The Cradle, Though It Takes Him To The Grave.

You Have The Older Generation Like Iris Murdoch And Angus Wilson Who Are Not As Old As Graham Greene, But Still Are Coming On. I Dare Say Anyone Who Knew The Scene Better Than I Know It Could Fill It In With A Very Satisfactory Supply Of Novels.

Nothing Is So Impenetrable As Laughter In A Language You Don't Understand.