"The hero of the inferior—i.e., the typically American—novel engages in no such doomed and fateful combat. His conflict is not with the inexplicable ukases of destiny, the limitations of his own strength, the dead hand upon him, but simply with the superficial desires of his elemental fellow men. He thus has a fair chance of winning—and in bad fiction that chance is always converted into a certainty. So he marries the daughter of the owner of the factory and eventually gobbles the factory itself. His success gives thrills to persons who can imagine no higher aspiration. He embodies their optimism, as the other hero embodies the pessimism of more introspective and idealistic men. He is the protagonist of that great majority which is so inferior that it is quite unconscious of its inferiority."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
H. L. Mencken, “The National Letters,” Prejudices: Second Series (New York: 1920), p. 43
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fiction
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Fiction
47 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Fiction →
Related Quotes
"Nunc fabularum cur sit inventum genus, Brevi decebo. Servitus obnoxia, Quia, quae volebat, non audebat dicere, Affect…"
"A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irrit…"
"I do not blame the words, for they are, as it were, choice and precious vessels, but I do deplore the wine of error w…"
"(You once said, "Fiction is NOT autobiography in a party dress." OK, then what is it?) NH: It's what happens after yo…"
"We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind - mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch …"
"People substituted writing (fiction) for what was once spiritual life, poetry (chaotic words) for actual ecstasies. A…"
"Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposi…"
"The author of any work of fiction that is any good takes me so fully into his orbit that he becomes my friend; I thin…"
"Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality."
"Fiction is fact distilled into truth."