In a message dated 9/17/12 3:01:08 PM, [email protected] writes:
> It seemed to me the great illustrator Al Hirschfeld had a > remarkable gift for discerning the most telling aspect of his subjects. > Talented political cartoonists -- and "impressionists" one sees on > television -- have also impressed me in this way. > > I should stress that what I'm saying is not confined to "cartoons". In fiction narratives, the writer cannot possibly reproduce all the aspects of a given setting or moment. It was one of Hemingway's gifts that he could select the aspects that helped recreate the feel of the moment. (He was big on the weather.) Rejecting what's irrelevant is part of that gift. The most persistent and trying question for the fiction writer is: what to put in and what to leave out. All good writing is an alchemy of memory, imagination and sensibility.
