American novelists, more than others, are haunted by the fear of failure, because it's such a common pattern in America. The ghost of Fitzgerald, dying in Hollywood, with his comeback book unfinished, and his best book, Tender Is The Night, scorned. His ghost hangs over every American novelist's typewriter.
Irwin Shaw in Writers at Work, Fifth Series, edited by George Plimpton, 1981
Irwin Shaw in Writers at Work, Fifth Series, edited by George Plimpton, 1981
If I was as good a writer as F. Scott Fitzgerald I wouldn’t consider myself a failure.
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