Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, December 30, 2025

Useful fiction, stubborn facts

Someone on the Internet asked the William James Society if a useful fiction can be true.
WJ's reply:

Literary fiction can be true in the pragmatic sense, definitely. But unlike my shallower younger brother the novelist, I have to forge every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts. We pragmatists do not deny reality. We do sometimes attempt to defy it.

https://bsky.app/profile/wjsociety.bsky.social/post/3mb7gbzit2c22

No comments:

Post a Comment

From the Paris Review William and Henry James

When Henry James decided to come to America in 1904 and 1905, his elder brother, William James, was not immediately pleased. William said th...