"Arnold Bennett was a writer I admired. He was actually taking notes at his father's deathbed"
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Admiration doesn’t usually come packaged with a shiver, but Leonard knows exactly what he’s doing by calling Bennett “a writer I admired” and then immediately yanking the curtain back on the cost of that vocation. The punchline isn’t just that Bennett took notes at his father’s deathbed; it’s that Leonard frames this as proof of seriousness. In one stroke, the quote flatters craft and indicts it.
As a dramatist, Leonard is sensitive to scenes: the deathbed is the oldest stage set in Western storytelling, soaked in expectations of reverence, privacy, and the unsayable. Dropping “actually” into the sentence works like a stage direction to the audience: yes, it’s as bad as it sounds. That little word does the moral work, signaling disbelief while also confessing a grudging respect for the discipline it represents.
The subtext is a conflict many writers recognize and many non-writers suspect: the mind that keeps converting life into material doesn’t clock out for grief. Bennett’s not being accused of cruelty so much as of professional reflex. Leonard’s “admired” lands ambiguously - part homage to unsentimental observation, part warning about what observation can hollow out.
Context matters, too. Leonard came up in a mid-century literary culture that prized the hard, reportorial eye and distrusted sentimentality. This line punctures romantic ideas of authorship: the writer as vampire, yes, but also as archivist, preserving even pain because it will otherwise disappear. The sting is that art’s “taking notes” can look indistinguishable from betrayal.
As a dramatist, Leonard is sensitive to scenes: the deathbed is the oldest stage set in Western storytelling, soaked in expectations of reverence, privacy, and the unsayable. Dropping “actually” into the sentence works like a stage direction to the audience: yes, it’s as bad as it sounds. That little word does the moral work, signaling disbelief while also confessing a grudging respect for the discipline it represents.
The subtext is a conflict many writers recognize and many non-writers suspect: the mind that keeps converting life into material doesn’t clock out for grief. Bennett’s not being accused of cruelty so much as of professional reflex. Leonard’s “admired” lands ambiguously - part homage to unsentimental observation, part warning about what observation can hollow out.
Context matters, too. Leonard came up in a mid-century literary culture that prized the hard, reportorial eye and distrusted sentimentality. This line punctures romantic ideas of authorship: the writer as vampire, yes, but also as archivist, preserving even pain because it will otherwise disappear. The sting is that art’s “taking notes” can look indistinguishable from betrayal.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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