The Fallacy of Insignificance

“The fallacy of insignificance can be combated on the ‘writer’s front’ by a deliberate attempt to replace worn-out religious and cultural concepts with a new existentialism.”

“When I enquire into my own experience of ‘nausea’, I discover that it is closely connected with a great number of other terms: unreality, boredom, futility, frustration.”

“In the final analysis, ‘the nausea’ is the fallacy of insignificance. It is expressed in Eliot’s lines:

-. . . and leave me sitting, pen in hand…

Not knowing what to feel, or if I understand.-

This feeling is ‘existential’; it refuses to put an interpretation on the world.”

“All men are supplied by a powerhouse of will and subconscious drive, but very few are aware of anything but the need to keep alive.”

“If it is a mental attitude that has created the problem, then it will be a change of attitude that will be the first step in solving it. ‘Insignificance’ is a literary trend that can be combated.”

“Now obviously, the statement ‘a man is free’ is almost meaningless if it is taken to mean ‘he has no limitations’. In order to have meaning, his limitations must be stated, the boundaries within which he has freedom and choice.”