All I'm saying is that there is a generation gap, and I think it revolves around this public/private thing. Our generation -- we subscribe to the old liberal doctrine of the inviolate self. I'ts the great tradition of realistic fiction, it's what novels are all about. the private life in the foreground, history a distant rumble of gunfire, somewhere offstage. In Jane Austen not even a rumble. Well, the novel is dying, and us with it. No wonder I could never get anything out of my novel-writing class at Euphoric State. It's an unnatural medium for their experience. Those kids...are living a film, not a novel.

Auteur: David Lodge