Literary Birthday – 25 August – Howard Jacobson

Happy Birthday, Howard Jacobson, born on 25 August 1942.

Howard Jacobson Quotes

1. You begin by reading reading reading. Read good writing. Don’t write about your life, but start with what you know about. That doesn’t mean it’s you; you might know something else.
2. Novels began as a comic form and should remain as a comic form.
3. One of the reasons there seem to be fewer readers for literature today than there were yesterday is that the concept of failure has been outlawed. If we are all beautiful, all clever, all happy, all successes in our way, what do we want with the language of the dispossessed?
4. The politics of youth are, by definition, the politics of ignorance.
5. There was no child. Children spoilt the story.
6. How do you explain to somebody who doesn’t understand that you don’t build a library to read. A library is a resource. Something you go to, for reference, as and when. But also something you simply look at, because it gives you succour, answers to some idea of who you are or, more to the point, who you would like to be, who you will be once you own every book you need to own.
7. Novelists are drawn to failure. Those who prosper in the world as it is have no need to re-imagine it.
8. Read other writers but don’t be other writers. Don’t be cowed by all the great writers that you like.
9. Remember that it’s your job as a writer, if you see any sign of ideology in you, to kill it. Writing is not the expression of your belief system. What you believe is of no interest to anybody. Almost what anybody believes is of no interest to anybody.
10. Remember how superior art is to belief. And away you go!

Howard Jacobson is a British novelist, journalist, essayist, columnist, and broadcaster. He has also worked as a lecturer, speaker, television critic, art critic, and restaurant critic. Jacobson studied English at Downing College, Cambridge, where he was taught by F. R. Leavis. He became best known for his comic novels, many of which centre on British Jewish characters and explore relationships, identity, culture, and family life. His work has often been compared with that of Jewish-American novelist Philip Roth, particularly because he sometimes creates fictional versions of himself. Jacobson has jokingly described himself as ‘a Jewish Jane Austen’. In 2010, Jacobson won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2012. His memoir, Mother’s Boy: A Writer’s Beginnings, looks at his early life and the experiences that shaped him as a writer. His more recent novel is Howl.

Source for Image: Howard Jacobson’s Substack

by Amanda Patterson
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