if the intention of the artist, the writer, is to make as true and honest a response to the world as he can, if it be his intention to use the best powers of language and imagination to create a vision arising out of his sense of what it is to be alive in the world, and if he be faithful to that intention, then what he makes will be a work of realism, whether it be filled with dragons and broomsticks or with kitchen sinks and offices. Van Gogh’s painting of a starry night doesn’t look like a photograph of a starry night or, indeed, what a starry night looks like to the naked eye, but it is a
...more
