Hearing Secret Harmonies

‰ЫПTwo compensations for growing old are worth putting on record as the condition asserts itself. The first is a vantage point gained for acquiring embellishments to narratives that have been unfolding for years beside one‰ЫЄs own, trimmings that can even appear to supply the conclusion of a given story, though finality is never certain, a dimension always possible to add. The other mild advantage endorses a keener perception for the authenticities of mythology, not only of the traditional sort, but ‰ЫУ when such are any good ‰ЫУ the latterday mythologies of poetry and the novel.‰Ыќ

Trapnel: ‰ЫПPeople think because a novel‰ЫЄs invented, it isn‰ЫЄt true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Because a novel‰ЫЄs invented, it is true. Biography and memoirs can never be wholly true, since they can‰ЫЄt include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that. The novelist himself lays it down. His decision is binding. The biographer, even at his highest and best, can be only tentative, empirical. The autobiographer, for his part, is imprisoned in his own egotism. He must always be suspect. In contrast with the other two, the novelist is a god, creating his man, making him breathe and walk. The man, created in his own image, provides information about the god. In a sense you know more about Balzac and Dickens from their novels, than Rousseau and Casanova from their Confessions.‰Ыќ