Art & Creativity Quote by John Irving

Irving’s bravado lands because it’s not really about critics at all; it’s about controlling the terms of legitimacy in a culture that loves to treat reviewing as a kind of parallel art form. He starts with the sane, therapeutic premise - don’t dwell on your enemies - then immediately reveals the more combustible truth: he does dwell, he just converts the irritation into a hierarchy where he’s automatically on top. The move is blunt, almost schoolyard, and that’s why it works. It punctures the genteel fiction that authors and critics occupy the same plane.

The subtext is craft as moral authority. “They haven’t done what I do” isn’t a logical argument (great critics exist; productivity isn’t quality), it’s a claim to jurisdiction: only practitioners get to speak with consequence. By invoking “11 novels,” he weaponizes endurance. The number is less résumé than shield - a way of turning taste (which is debatable) into labor (which is quantifiable). It’s also a subtle jab at the economy of cultural commentary: many reviewers are generalists, deadline-driven, often underpaid, asked to generate verdicts at speed. Irving is pointing at that pipeline and calling it thin.

Context matters: Irving came up in a period when major novelists could be both bestselling and prestige, yet still be kneecapped by reviews that shaped reputations pre-internet. His posture reads as defensive pride, but also as an old-school author’s insistence that making the thing is harder than talking about it. The irony is that he’s asking not to dwell, while delivering one of the more memorable dwellings you’ll ever read.