Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, __ook at my beautiful home! Isn__ it fine?_ And not, __ook at the home so-and-so has built._ Thus we shouldn__ cry, __ook what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!_ But rather, __ook at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave?
When David Markson wrote in June to complain about an author's getting an award he though should have been his, Wallace gently warned him away from the pitfall of envy: "Mostly I try to remember how lucky I am to be able to write, and doubly, triply lucky I am that anyone else is willing to read it, to say nothing of publishing it. I'm no pollyanna - this keeping-the-spirits-up shit is hard work, and I don't often do it well. But I try... Life is good
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When David Markson wrote in June to complain about an author's getting an award he though should have been his, Wallace gently warned him away from the pitfall of envy: "Mostly I try to remember how lucky I am to be able to write, and doubly, triply lucky I am that anyone else is willing to read it, to say nothing of publishing it. I'm no pollyanna - this keeping-the-spirits-up shit is hard work, and I don't often do it well. But I try... Life is good
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Genius is a sovereign power; it forms schools; it lays hold on the spirits of men, with irresistible might; and it exercises an immeasurable influence on the whole condition of human life. This sovereignty of genius is a gift of God, possessed only by his grace. It is subject to no one and is responsible to him alone who has granted it this ascendancy.
...bow to genius, but to the authority of that genius - not the display of talent...
Sometimes she arches away from me and wears a light halo of genius about her.
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