Tim Parks quotes

All Dickens is packed with orphans or people in uncertain relation to family groups, or clubs. It's impossible to read anything he wrote without feeling that the question of belonging was a major issue for him. He had to write about these matters. If we read Lovecraft's science-fiction horror stories, weird and unpleasant as they may be, they are all obsessively about fear of otherness-women's, people of other races', aliens'. All the over-heated horror of the books arises from this gut fear. He can't leave it alone. Whether or not we like the books and quite regardless of any verisimilitude, it's clear that the author is writing directly from his personal concerns. The stuff wasn't just constructed for a literary prize. A certain form of repetition, particularly the endless reformulation, in dozens of different guises, of the same core conflict is probably the hallmark of authenticity. (Tim Parks)

Virginia Woolf thought one of the pleasures of reading contemporary novels was that they forced you to exercise your judgment. There was no received opinion about a book. You had to decide for yourself whether it was good.

Tim Parks

"Into thirty centuries born,” Edwin Muir began his most celebrated poem, "At home in them all but the very last.” Much is said about escapism in narrative and fiction. 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 have to live: the present.

Tim Parks

With books at least, the best experiences are not when you find what you were looking for, but when something quite different finds you, takes you by surprise, shifts your tastes to new territory.

Tim Parks

Italy is not a country for beginners.

Tim Parks

More and more the writer is aware of an international community of readers for whom dense language use and frequent local references are a hindrance. This seems obvious. I don't decry it or criticize it - it's just a fact.

Tim Parks

Any time one seeks to produce for a larger public one inevitably has to drop material that would only be understood by a particular group.

Tim Parks

If you want to appeal to people of different languages and cultures, you have to move toward tropes that are universally recognized. Games, references, subtleties that only work in your language are hardly useful.

Tim Parks