"No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks"
About this Quote
Wisdom, Jong suggests, isn’t a polished trophy you win for good behavior; it’s the bruise you earn by misjudging things in full view. The line flips the usual hierarchy - “fool” isn’t the opposite of “wise,” it’s the admission price. What makes it bite is the asymmetry she draws: everyone blunders, but writers are forced to stage their blunders where strangers can heckle, screenshot, and misread them forever.
The subtext is about exposure as a working condition. A novelist drafts in private but fails in public: every published book is a record of risk, overreach, and the occasional beautiful mistake. Jong’s “alas” lands like a sigh from someone who knows that the supposed glamour of authorship is really a long-term commitment to embarrassment. Meanwhile “the rest of the human race” gets the luxury of editing their own narrative. They can revise their past in conversation, bury old opinions, deny the cringier chapters. Writers don’t get that; their “tracks” are literal ink.
Context matters: Jong came up in an era when women writers were routinely punished for candor, especially about sex, ambition, and anger. Being a “fool in public” wasn’t just aesthetic vulnerability; it was reputational hazard. The wit here is defensive and daring at once: she’s claiming foolishness as both the engine of insight and the cost of telling the truth when society would prefer you stay safely, quietly wrong.
The subtext is about exposure as a working condition. A novelist drafts in private but fails in public: every published book is a record of risk, overreach, and the occasional beautiful mistake. Jong’s “alas” lands like a sigh from someone who knows that the supposed glamour of authorship is really a long-term commitment to embarrassment. Meanwhile “the rest of the human race” gets the luxury of editing their own narrative. They can revise their past in conversation, bury old opinions, deny the cringier chapters. Writers don’t get that; their “tracks” are literal ink.
Context matters: Jong came up in an era when women writers were routinely punished for candor, especially about sex, ambition, and anger. Being a “fool in public” wasn’t just aesthetic vulnerability; it was reputational hazard. The wit here is defensive and daring at once: she’s claiming foolishness as both the engine of insight and the cost of telling the truth when society would prefer you stay safely, quietly wrong.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|
More Quotes by Erica
Add to List
