"You can't avoid dealing with moral matters, because that's what life is about. But I think it is wrong when somebody like Steinbeck crusades in his fiction. That's why Steinbeck bores me so. The real crusader doesn't need to crusade; he writes about human beings in the sense Chekhov did. He tries to see a human being whole with all his wrong-headedness and all his right-headedness. To blind yourself to one thing for the sake of your prejudice is limiting. I think it is a mistake. There's so much room in the world for crusading, but it is for the editorial writer, the speech-maker, the politician, and the man in public life to do, not for the writer of fiction."
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Pulitzer Prize winnersNovelists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesAgnostics from the United StatesPeople from California
Original Language: English
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Sources
1978 interview included in Conversations with Eudora Welty Edited by Peggy Whitman Prenshaw (1993)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck
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John Steinbeck
1902 – 1968
US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller
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