“ But perhaps the greatest escapism of all is to take refuge in the domesticity of the past, the home that history and literature become, avoiding the one moment of time in which we are not at home, yet… Tim Parks
“ He hams his Brummie accent, I tell myself, the way so many ex-pats ham their lost identity. The moustache is a pose. Yet, he hams this unpredictable matey belligerence, this curiously Midlands attitud… Tim Parks
“ But whatever the exact psychology of the process {receiving recognition or literary success}, the present has a way of contaminating the past. And the writing will change accordingly. Turmoil and dile… Tim Parks
“ And when Deirdre Bair went to interview Beckett for the biography the first thing he said was, ‘So you’ve come to demonstrate that it was all, after all, autobiographical. Tim Parks
“ No one is treated with more patronizing condescension than the unpublished author or, in general, the would-be artist. At best he is commiserated. At worst mocked. He has presumed to rise above others… Tim Parks
“ In general, when a novel manipulates its material to conform to the pieties of the day, or alternatively to attack those pieties for no other reason than the visibility such an attack will generate, w… Tim Parks
“ In any power game, it seems, the dominant party is the least likely to be aware of what is going on. Tim Parks
“ What I’m suggesting then is that much of our response to novels may have to do with the kind of “system” or “conversation” we grew up in and within which we had to find a position and establish an ide… Tim Parks
