“Lie, above all lie” (Onetti)
(Considerations realized after advice by Juan Carlos Onetti)
In the novel (and in the short story) imagination’s will is expressed by literary language; thus it should not be accountable to reality nor to history, whether one is writing about them or not.
Whoever seeks to cross-check sources has chosen the wrong genre.
Truth is censorship.
Likelihood is the fiction writer’s main tool for writing short stories and novels.
Likelihood is more important than truth.
Whoever is looking for entertaining content should go watch a movie, a TV series or should read non-fiction and good biographies.
Whoever is looking for ideology, refer to the ideological treatises that fit your taste and purposes.
The novel and the short story aren’t fun and they don’t entertain; their end is not spectacle, nor to strive for ratings. The novel and the short story have as their charge to implicate (alienate) the reader with an atmosphere, a language and a time belonging to its own universe; to recreate or create and in that direction to gratify by means of its aesthetic value, because even though we tend to forget, good novels and good short stories are inscribed in the fine arts.
If they roll out the red carpet, avoid walking on it.
Be invisible.
Lying brings us closer to truth and not vice-versa.
The good fiction writer is more of a sophist than a philosopher.
{ Israel Centeno, israelcenteno.blogspot.com, 16 March 2009 }
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