"I agree with John Berger that peasants don't write novels because they don't need them. They have a portrait of themselves from gossip, tales, music, and some celebrations. That is enough. The middle class at the beginning of the industrial revolution needed a portrait of itself because the old portrait didn't work for this new class. Their roles were different; their lives in the city were new. The novel served this function then, and it still does. It tells about the city values, the urban values. Now my people, we "peasants," have come to the city, that is to say, we live with its values. There is a confrontation between old values of the tribes and new urban values. It's confusing. There has to be a mode to do what the music did for blacks, what we used to be able to do with each other in private and in that civilization that existed underneath the white civilization."
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Novelists from EnglandPoets from EnglandArt criticsPolitical authors from EnglandPainters from England
Original Language: English
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1981 interview in Conversations with Toni Morrison edited by Danille K. Taylor-Guthrie (1994)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Berger
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John Berger
John Peter Berger (5 November, 1926 - 2 January, 2017) was an art critic, novelist, painter and author. The best-known among his many works include the novel G., winner of the 1972 Booker Prize, and Ways of Seeing a BBC television series of art criticism and accompanying book.
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