Raymond Chandler on writers

A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong."    

                           

--Raymond Chandler

Favorites:

The Big Sleep

The Simple Art of Murder

The long Goodbye

And a bonus quote:

"Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon."

A Minifesto

 

Call it a minifesto.

Art imitates life, said Aristotle, but Oscar Wilde allowed as he’d gotten it backward: life imitates art. These days, we’re worried that machines imitate art uncomfortably well, but that’s not where the real threat to artists comes from. It’s the audience imitating artists that should worry us. The general public has taken to imitating art with such gusto and aplomb that the artists—read storytellers—are getting crowded out.

Read the entire piece at Criminal Element.