If You Want To Study Writing, Read

If You Want To Study Writing, Read Dickens. That's How To Study Writing, Or Faulkner, Or D.h. Lawrence, Or John Keats. They Can Teach You Everything You Need To Know About Writing.

My Second Book, Follow Me Down Had Some Success, Got Good Critical Notices, Went Into A Second Printing And Things Like That, But Shiloh Was By Far The Most Successful Of Those First Five Novels.

A Combination Of All That Was Best In The Gladdest Days Of The Departing Year.

And I Really Do Think That The Difficulty Of Research Makes It More Real To You Than Punching A Thing To Find Out How Many Men Were Killed At This Particular Action.

The Point I Would Make Is That The Novelist And The Historian Are Seeking The Same Thing: The Truth – Not A Different Truth: The Same Truth – Only They Reach It, Or Try To Reach It, By Different Routes. Whether The Event Took Place In A World Now Gone To Dust, Preserved By Documents And Evaluated By Scholarship, Or In The Imagination, Preserved By Memory And Distilled By The Creative Process, They Both Want To Tell Us How It Was: To Re-create It, By Their Separate Methods, And Make It Live Again In The World Around Them.