... The moral act of writing.
In the comments, David says that "for writers, as writers, there is only one moral obligation: to write well." But do you write well only if what you write is perfectly phrased? Doesn't what you write also have to be, as best you can see, true?
As I noted elsewhere on the subject:
ReplyDeleteR. T. said...
If a writer is true to himself or herself, with absolute willingness to dig into and reveal (at least parts of) his or her real self for the purposes of creating that which is aesthetic (however he or she understands that arguable concept), then is not the writer then a moral (and responsible) writer? What more could you demand of a writer other than honesty and commitment to aesthetics?
8:54 AM
R. T. said...
Postscript: I should perhaps add my opinion that assessing the moral power of a writer (and the writer's aesthetics) is not the same thing as assessing the literary quality (i.e., effectiveness and correctness) of a particular example of the writer's work. In other words, to say it differently, a well-written paragraph is not a measure of whether or not the writing is moral.