"One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read"
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Writing, for Sarraute, isn’t a talent so much as a consequence: you absorb, then you produce. The line has the blunt, almost legalistic cadence of someone used to establishing prerequisites. “Can’t” and “have to” shut down the romantic myth of the untrained genius scribbling from pure inner fire. She frames reading as prior labor, the kind that builds a mind’s syntax, rhythm, and moral range. If you want a voice, she implies, you first need an ear.
The interesting pivot is the quiet institutional politics tucked into the last clause. Universities aren’t praised for teaching you to write; they’re praised for giving you time and permission to read. That’s both generous and faintly accusatory: in a culture that treats reading as leisure or elitism, the university becomes one of the few socially sanctioned spaces where deep attention isn’t an indulgence. The subtext is economic as much as intellectual. To read widely requires resources: books, quiet, time, and a protected schedule. Sarraute slips that privilege in as “opportunity,” a word that sounds meritocratic while admitting scarcity.
Context sharpens the edge. As a 20th-century writer associated with the Nouveau Roman, Sarraute helped dismantle conventional plot and character psychology. That kind of formal risk doesn’t come from nowhere; it comes from saturating yourself in what’s been done, then noticing where it can be broken. Her point isn’t to revere the canon; it’s to treat reading as the laboratory where experiments become possible.
The interesting pivot is the quiet institutional politics tucked into the last clause. Universities aren’t praised for teaching you to write; they’re praised for giving you time and permission to read. That’s both generous and faintly accusatory: in a culture that treats reading as leisure or elitism, the university becomes one of the few socially sanctioned spaces where deep attention isn’t an indulgence. The subtext is economic as much as intellectual. To read widely requires resources: books, quiet, time, and a protected schedule. Sarraute slips that privilege in as “opportunity,” a word that sounds meritocratic while admitting scarcity.
Context sharpens the edge. As a 20th-century writer associated with the Nouveau Roman, Sarraute helped dismantle conventional plot and character psychology. That kind of formal risk doesn’t come from nowhere; it comes from saturating yourself in what’s been done, then noticing where it can be broken. Her point isn’t to revere the canon; it’s to treat reading as the laboratory where experiments become possible.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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