“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what hidden fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tambours I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”

Dr Cardoso beckoned the waitress and ordered two fruit salads, no sugar or ice-cream please. Then: I have a question for you, said Dr Cardoso, and that is, are you acquainted with the medecins-philosophes? No I ‘m not, admitted Pereira, who are they? The leaders of this school of thought are Theodule Ribot and Pierre Janet, said Dr Cardoso, it was their work I studied in Paris, they are doctors and psychologists, but also philosopher, and they hold a theory I think interesting, the theory of the confederation of souls. Tell me about it, said Pereira. Well, said Dr Cardoso, it means that to believe in a ‘self’ as a distinct entity, quite distinct from the infinite variety of all the other ‘selves’ that we have within us, is a fallacy, the naive illusion of the single unique soul we inherit from Christian tradition, whereas Dr Ribot and Dr Janet see the personality as a confederation of numerous souls, because within us we each have numerous souls, don’t you think a confederation which agrees to put itself under the government of one ruling ego. Dr Cardoso made a brief pause and then continued: What we think of as ourselves, our inward being, is only an effect, not a cause, and what’s more it is subject to the control of a ruling ego which has to impose its will on the confederation of our souls, so in the case of another ego arising, one stronger and more powerful, this ego overthrows the first ruling ego, takes its place and acquires the chieftainship of the cohort of souls, or rather the confederation, and remains in power until it is in turn overthrown by yet another ruling ego, either by frontal attack or by slow nibbling away. It may be, concluded Dr Cardoso, that after slowly nibbling away in you some ruling is is gaining the chieftainship of your confederation of souls, Dr Pereira, and there’s nothing you can do about it except perhaps give it a helping hand whenever you get the chance.

— Antonio Tabucchi’s Pereira Maintains. (Pages 112-113).

‘Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that dreaming and wakefulness are the pages of a single book, and that to read them in order is to live, and to leaf through them at random, to dream. Paintings within paintings and books that branch into other books help us sense this oneness.’ Jorges Luis Borges, ‘When Fiction Lives in Fiction’ 160-162, trans. Esther Allen, in The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986, p.162

A note from Borges passed on to me via a friend. She sends me a lot of lovely quotes like this.

INTERVIEWER

Do writers perceive differently than others? Is there anything unique about the writer’s eye?

ATWOOD

It’s all bound up with what sorts of things we have words for. Eskimos, the Inuit, have fifty-two words for snow. Each of those words describes a different kind of snow. In Finnish they have no he or she words. If you’re writing a novel in Finnish, you have to make gender very obvious early on, either by naming the character or by describing a sex-specific activity. But I can’t really answer this question because I don’t know how “others” observe the world. But judging from the letters I receive, many others recognize at least part of themselves in what I write, though the part recognized varies from person to person, of course. The unique thing about writers is that they write. Therefore they are pickier about words, at least on paper. But everyone “writes” in a way; that is, each person has a “story”—a personal narrative—which is constantly being replayed, revised, taken apart, and put together again. The significant points in this narrative change as a person ages—what may have been tragedy at twenty is seen as comedy or nostalgia at forty. All children “write.” (And paint, and sing.) I suppose the real question is why do so many people give it up. Intimidation, I suppose. Fear of not being good. Lack of time.

INTERVIEWER

Do you ever feel struck by the limitations of language?

ATWOOD

All writers feel struck by the limitations of language. All serious writers.

The Paris Review – Margaret Atwood, The Art of Fiction No. 121

YALTA,
December 3, 1898.

Shall I speak now of defects? But that is not so easy. To speak of the defects of a talent is like speaking of the defects of a great tree growing in the garden; what is chiefly in question, you see, is not the tree itself but the tastes of the man who is looking at it. Is not that so?

I will begin by saying that to my mind you have not enough restraint. You are like a spectator at the theatre who expresses his transports with so little restraint that he prevents himself and other people from listening. This lack of restraint is particularly felt in the descriptions of nature with which you interrupt your dialogues; when one reads those descriptions one wishes they were more compact, shorter, put into two or three lines. The frequent mention of tenderness, whispering, velvetiness, and so on, give those descriptions a rhetorical and monotonous character—and they make one feel cold and almost exhaust one. The lack of restraint is felt also in the descriptions of women (“Malva,” “On the Raft”) and love scenes. It is not vigour, not breadth of touch, but just lack of restraint. Then there is the frequent use of words quite unsuitable in stories of your type. “Accompaniment,” “disc,” “harmony,” such words spoil the effect. You often talk of waves. There is a strained feeling and a sort of circumspection in your descriptions of educated people; that is not because you have not observed educated people sufficiently, you know them, but you don’t seem to know from what side to approach them.

YALTA,
January 3, 1899.

Nothing is less characteristic of you than coarseness, you are clever and subtle and delicate in your feelings. Your best things are “In the Steppe,” and “On the Raft,”—did I write to you about that? They are splendid things, masterpieces, they show the artist who has passed through a very good school. I don’t think that I am mistaken. The only defect is the lack of restraint, the lack of grace. When a man spends the least possible number of movements over some definite action, that is grace. One is conscious of superfluity in your expenditure.

The descriptions of nature are the work of an artist; you are a real landscape painter. Only the frequent personification (anthropomorphism) when the sea breathes, the sky gazes, the steppe barks, nature whispers, speaks, mourns, and so on—such metaphors make your descriptions somewhat monotonous, sometimes sweetish, sometimes not clear; beauty and expressiveness in nature are attained only by simplicity, by such simple phrases as “The sun set,” “It was dark,” “It began to rain,” and so on—and that simplicity is characteristic of you in the highest degree, more so perhaps than of any other writer.

Quotes taken from Letters of Anton Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Translation by Constance Garnett.

What qualities does it actually take to be a writer? “To be a novelist,” says Rankin, with the assuredness of wisdom, “you have to be a sympathetic, empathetic human being, a people watcher.” When writing a crime novel, you start with a type then make them more three-dimensional, and you do that through trial and error, through “practice, practice, practice”, and learning from the great writers who know how to do it. “Then, you start to find your own voice and own themes that haven’t been tackled.

“They say there are only seven plots in the world, but stories keep coming at us,” he says. “It’s a bit like the 26 letters of the alphabet – out of those, anyone can write a sentence that’s never been written before. How amazing is that? You can write a sentence that’s never before been written in the history of mankind. I think that’s phenomenal. I love that. Stories are inexhaustible because human beings are inexhaustible.

“I’m interested in what makes us tick. Sadly, I’m interested in the kind of darker side of what makes us tick. I would find it harder to write a Mills and Boon or comedy of manners set in a posh English boarding school. I’d much rather write about losers and loners and people who’ve done bad things along the way.”

– The National Arts Interview with Ian Rankin