literary ethics

[Doug Millison]

>From Publisher's Weekly, 7 July 1997, regarding Gary Indiana's new novel
"Resentment":
"Despite the Author's Note -- a preemptive legal device -- insisting that
Resentment is not a 'novel with a key,' this book may well become the
success de scandale of the summer for its hilarious treatment of such
figures as Ingrid Sischy, Dominick Dunne, Hilton Als, and Jamaica Kincaid.
Asked if he expects to be taken to task for this, Indiana reflects:  'If
people want to read it that way, then I can't stop them. About certain
characters, I would say that payback is a very bad motive for writing a
novel but it is one of the perks.' Payback for what exactly? 'The
ridiculousness of people. If you're obliged to swallow somebody's absurdity
for decades at a time, you're certainly entitled at some point to just say,
'oh, you're so full of shit,' he drawls. 'I'm basically somebody who sees
the world as a comedy. We live in a world of rampant hypocrisy where people
never say what they think, they never say what their real opinion is in
public. They never divulge just how much they resent other people, how much
they envy, how much they despise.'"



D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com
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