Friday, November 30, 2007

More Toward Realism than Fantasy

I've always been drawn more toward realism than fantasy, because it seems to me that realism is endlessly interesting and finally indeterminable. Realism is a species of fantasy that's much more integrated and hard-core than fantasy itself, but if you are ready to come to grips with the inevitable slipperiness of most available facts, you come to recognize that realism is not a direct approach to the truth so much as it is the most concentrated form of fantasy.

Birds and Lions, Norman Mailer, the New Yorker, December 23 & 30, 2002

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