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Remember that a book is many drafts - mine certainly are. It's improvisation. It's as much jazz and the way we talk and the way I heard people preach coming up as it is writing.
John Edgar Wideman
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John Edgar Wideman
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: June 14
Novelist
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Book
Jazz
Many
Mines
Writing
Mine
Much
Certainly
Way
Coming
People
Heard
Drafts
Talk
Improvisation
Remember
Preach
More quotes by John Edgar Wideman
There's something human that has to do with time and space and being who I am that is in progress and always will be in progress. And who I am, on different days, different moments, depends on different aspects of my past.
John Edgar Wideman
Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.
John Edgar Wideman
I'm very hard-nosed and cold-blooded and I can walk past a drowning man. If I have someplace else to go, well, tough s**t. I could do that. I can. Have. Sometimes, not because I was callous but had to do it.
John Edgar Wideman
I don't tell everything. I want the reader to have the feeling that maybe they know the whole truth, but they don't.
John Edgar Wideman
I believe - what did Faulkner say? The past is not even past.
John Edgar Wideman
I don't write books because I have answers. I write books because I have questions. What we are is the questions that we ask, not the answers that we provide. It's all about the process of self-examination. I think that's what the best writing always contains.
John Edgar Wideman
I'm not a fearful person, but I'm a pretty pessimistic person. So some of my best times are waiting, anticipating. That's the way it always has been with me, whether anticipating a ball game, anticipating a relationship.
John Edgar Wideman
My father combined many of the elements that were feared in the culture, but also he was a warm figure, a figure we needed. We depended on him to give us a little bit of strength and courage.
John Edgar Wideman
I get off on anticipating and waiting much more than I get off on the actual event.
John Edgar Wideman
The hardship, the pain, the suffering of my brother and my son in prison, that's absolutely their experience, that's not mine. I don't get any credit for enduring that. I never give myself any credit for enduring that.
John Edgar Wideman
Things seem to fall apart inevitably.
John Edgar Wideman
There are still horrible things that go on because of the myth of race, but we don't have to succumb totally.
John Edgar Wideman
That's one of the beauties, I think, of African American life. There was this thing called slavery and adjustments were made. It literally destroyed millions, but it didn't destroy everybody and it didn't destroy the inner lives of all the people who experienced it.
John Edgar Wideman
I had a deep prejudice against the South. It's taken me many years to get over that, be more open and thoughtful.
John Edgar Wideman
You have to be a minor superhero just to get to be a dignified man, and that's kind of exacerbated for men of color.
John Edgar Wideman
When I'm writing, I'm thinking, Well, this might be a book that I'll always be happy with, and certainly readers will be happy with. But another part of me knows that when I'm past the stage of writing, the book is gonna have good things about it, bad things about it - probably more bad than good. I just know that. That's who I am.
John Edgar Wideman
I really dislike when people talk about experimental, because any good writer is experimental. As a writer, you don't know what the hell you're doing. You're just doing it. You hope it works out well. I've been experimenting with these things myself in my own books.
John Edgar Wideman
My mother loved my father. From my view, she let him get away with too much. It broke my heart to see him in an old people's home and stop being strong and lose his voice.
John Edgar Wideman
There is no American history. There is no French history. There is no John Wideman. There are all these dreams that are floating around. People construct them and fight with them and criticize them, and the world goes on. I don't think the stars pay much attention.
John Edgar Wideman
As a reader, I do not like to have everything handed to me. Because after a while it gets formulaic and I'm thinking, If this is so thought through, then why do I need to read it. It's done! It becomes a beach book at a certain point.
John Edgar Wideman
