Art Quote by John Gardner

““The age old idea of human dignity comes to apply even to the indigent, even to the slaves, even to immigrants, now recently even to women. This is not to say that great writing is propaganda. But because the fictional process selects those fit for it, and because a requirement of that process is strong empathetic emotion, it turns out that the true writer's fundamental concern, his reason for finding a subject interesting in the first place, is likely to be humane. He sees injustice or misunderstanding in the world around him, and he cannot keep it out of his story. It may be true that he writes principally for the love of writing, and that in the heat of creation he cares as much about the convincing description of Helen's face as he does about the verities her story brings to focus, but the true literary artist is a far cry from those who create "toy fiction," good or bad--TV entertainments to take the pensioner's mind off his dismal existence, self-regarding aesthetic jokes, posh super-realism, where emotion is ruled out and idea is thought vulgar, or nostalgia fiction, or pornography. The true writer's joy in the fictional process is his pleasure in discovering, by means he can trust, what he believes and can affirm for all time. When the last trump plays, he will be listening, criticizing, figuring out the proper psychic distance. It should be added, for honesty's sake, that the true literary artist and the man or woman who makes "toy fiction" may be the same person in different moods. even on the subject of high seriousness, we must beware of reckless high seriousness.””

— John Gardner