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JOYCE CARY
The Art of Fiction No. 7
Interviewed by John Burrows & Alex Hamilton
Issue 7, Fall-Winter 1954-1955
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From the Interview
INTERVIEWER
Have you sympathy with those who most uncompromisingly pursue their own free idea whatever the opposition?

CARY
I don’t put a premium on aggression. Oh, no, no, no. I’m no life-force man. Critics write about my vitality. What is vitality? As a principle it is a lot of balls. The life force is rubbish, an abstraction, an idea without character. Shaw’s tale of life force is either senseless rubbish or he really means Shaw—Shaw as God’s mind. The life force doesn’t exist. Show me some in a bottle. The life of the world is the nature of God, and God is as real as the trees.
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