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Aristos Certainly Preceded My Novels, and Yes, Often Bears Heavily On Them

The author believes that keeping a personal diary is useful for novelists as it allows them to discover their true talents and interests in narrating real events. The author notes that rereading their older diaries feels like rereading a past diary about themselves, showing how they felt and thought at the time. The author indicates that their early work The Aristos, which discusses the natural inequality of humans but an obligation to others in society, influenced their later novels. When asked how they reconcile their belief in an elite few with their support for social egalitarianism, the author acknowledges an internal conflict between acknowledging natural differences in abilities while still believing in equality and equal justice for all of society.

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Ștefania Vasile
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19 views1 page

Aristos Certainly Preceded My Novels, and Yes, Often Bears Heavily On Them

The author believes that keeping a personal diary is useful for novelists as it allows them to discover their true talents and interests in narrating real events. The author notes that rereading their older diaries feels like rereading a past diary about themselves, showing how they felt and thought at the time. The author indicates that their early work The Aristos, which discusses the natural inequality of humans but an obligation to others in society, influenced their later novels. When asked how they reconcile their belief in an elite few with their support for social egalitarianism, the author acknowledges an internal conflict between acknowledging natural differences in abilities while still believing in equality and equal justice for all of society.

Uploaded by

Ștefania Vasile
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

I am a great believer in diaries, if only in the sense that bar exercises are good for ballet

dancers: its often through personal diarieshowever embarrassing they are to read now
that the novelist discovers his true bentthat he can narrate real events and distort them to
please himself, describe character, observe other human beings, hypothesize, invent, all the
rest. I think that is how I became a novelist, eventually. Its certainly how I tend to see my
older books when I reread them, which is not at all often: that is, as a sort of past diary about
myself. So thats how I felt and thought then. Not always a pleasant experience! The
Aristos certainly preceded my novels, and yes, often bears heavily on them.

INTERVIEWER
You insist in these early works on the natural inequality of human beings, but at the same
time you lean toward socialism. How do you reconcile your social egalitarianism with the
rather snobbish idea of an aristoi or elite few set apart from the many?

FOWLES
This is something of an eternal torment, or split, in my life. The idea of an elite few is, of
course, nowadays something no one likes to declare a belief in. On the other hand I am
absolutely sure that it is a biologicalif you like, Darwiniantruth. So I am torn between this
cruel but necessary truththat some, perhaps most strikingly in the arts and sciences, are
clearly better endowed or adapted than the othersand by that other, kinder truth that asks
equality and equal justice for society as a whole. In general I confess I much prefer the
company of reasonably intelligent and educated people, but I still basically hold with the
contention I made in The Aristos: that being superior in intelligence or education does not
excuse an indifference to hoi polloi, the Cleggs and fools they have to live among. On the
other hand, some of the recent calls for greater egalitarianism seem to me absurdly unreal.
You cant legislate stupidity and ignorance out of existence, or deny they arent evolutionary
disadvantages. But perhaps wed better not go into that!

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