Inside Out: A Working Theory of the Irish Short Story. John Kenny

O’Connor is at a major Harvard conference on the novel, sitting onstage alongside
Anthony West, and an unnamed writer begins to speak about the serious
responsibilities of the novelist. O’Connor begins to get hysterical:
It’s never happened to me before in public; I was giggling, I couldn’t stop myself.
And, ‘All right,’ I said at the end of it, ‘if there are any of my students here I’d like
them to remember that writing is fun.’ That’s the reason you do it, because you enjoy
it. You don’t read it because of the serious moral responsibility to read, and you don’t
write it because it’s a serious moral responsibility. You do it for exactly the same
reason that you paint pictures or play with the kids. It’s a creative activity. 36
Thus did one writer work it out. For himself.
——
I gratefully acknowledge funding from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and
Social Sciences under their Post-Doctoral Scheme which provided for the research and
writing of this essay.
36 Whittier, 155.