"I have never started a novel - I mean except the first, when I was starting a novel just to start a novel - I've never written one without rereading Victory. It opens up the possibilities of a novel. It makes it seem worth doing"
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Didion is confessing to a kind of literary superstition, but it’s also a flex: before she dares to build a world, she goes back to Conrad’s Victory to recalibrate what a novel can risk. The dash-heavy self-correction matters. “I mean except the first” isn’t just clarification; it’s a small moral tale about craft. Early on, she wrote “just to start a novel,” the way people take up running for the identity badge. After that initiation, the ritual becomes discipline: rereading as a way of refusing complacency.
The line “It opens up the possibilities” is Didion’s real subject. Victory isn’t a template; it’s a permission slip. She’s pointing to a book that makes the form feel roomy again, not trapped inside market categories or workshop commandments. That’s Didion’s subtextual quarrel with the era of the “well-made” novel: the tidy arc, the correct psychology, the politely signposted theme. Conrad, for her, blows the doors off those expectations, reminding her that novels can be atmospheric, morally slippery, structurally strange, and still devastating.
“It makes it seem worth doing” lands like a weary benediction. Didion isn’t romanticizing inspiration; she’s naming how hard it is to justify the labor of a novel when the culture is noisy, the self is unreliable, and the form can feel exhausted. Rereading becomes a way to renew ambition without pretending to innocence: to start again, not because you’re sure, but because a great book briefly makes doubt feel survivable.
The line “It opens up the possibilities” is Didion’s real subject. Victory isn’t a template; it’s a permission slip. She’s pointing to a book that makes the form feel roomy again, not trapped inside market categories or workshop commandments. That’s Didion’s subtextual quarrel with the era of the “well-made” novel: the tidy arc, the correct psychology, the politely signposted theme. Conrad, for her, blows the doors off those expectations, reminding her that novels can be atmospheric, morally slippery, structurally strange, and still devastating.
“It makes it seem worth doing” lands like a weary benediction. Didion isn’t romanticizing inspiration; she’s naming how hard it is to justify the labor of a novel when the culture is noisy, the self is unreliable, and the form can feel exhausted. Rereading becomes a way to renew ambition without pretending to innocence: to start again, not because you’re sure, but because a great book briefly makes doubt feel survivable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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