During the last year, reading these stories, these novels, in which there might be an occasional paragraph, a sentence, a phrase, of truth, I’ve been forced to acknowledge that the flashes of genuine art are all out of deep, suddenly stark, undisguisable private emotion. Even in translation there is no mistaking these lightning flashes of genuine personal feeling. And I read this dead stuff praying that just once there may be a short story, a novel, even an article, written wholly from genuine personal feeling.
