In America the career almost invariably becomes an obsession. The ‘get-ahead’ principle, carried to such extreme, inspires our writers to enormous efforts. A new book must come out every year. Otherwise they get panicky, and the first thing you know they belong to Alcoholics Anonymous or have embraced religion or plunged headlong into some political activity with nothing but an inchoate emotionalism to bring to it or to be derived from it. I think that this stems from a misconception of what it means to be a writer or any kind of creative artist. They feel it is something to adopt in the place of actual living, without understanding that art is a by-product of existence.
An Allegory of Man and His Sahara … a 1949 review of Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, in The New York Times, written by Tennessee Williams.
Source: The New York Times
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