Writers Who Take Writing Too Seriously

I'm so revolted by writers taking themselves seriously that, as a kind of protest, I've de-prioritized the role of writing in my life. I write when I've not got anything better to do--and even then I often do nothing instead. [I watched a documentary on J. D. Salinger's life. Now there's a writer who took himself and his writing too seriously. This is also true for novelists Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's just writing.]

Geoff Dyer, British novelist in a Paris Review interview, 1992