“I think there is a deep shame, a humiliation, in being a novelist. Deep inside us crouches a man on a ragged carpet, and the real world rides by.”

—John Fowles
From The Journals, Volume 1948-1965

It’s a thought I’ve had myself, if not in quite such dramatic terms, a thought that has recently been reinforced by seeing the film Capote.

The film fascinated me on every level . . . and repelled me. I both understood and was deeply disgusted by Truman Capote’s complete self involvement and by the way he used his subjects, even lying to them to get what he wanted, what he had to have for his story. As though the story mattered more than the human beings it was drawn from.

And yet, I found myself asking, aren’t all writers guilty of using everyone around us to create our small worlds of words?