Irwin Shaw
Irwin Shaw
Irwin Shawwas a prolific American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best known for two of his novels: The Young Lions, about the fate of three soldiers during World War II, made into a film of the same name starring Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, and Rich Man, Poor Man, about the fate of three siblings after World War II, that was made into a popular miniseries starring...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth27 February 1913
CityBronx, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I reach my readers regardless of what the critics have written
I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?
There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.
I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself.
A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.
If you're young enough, any kind of writing you do for a short period of time is a marvelous apprenticeship.
In America, we have the feeling of the doomed young artist. Fitzgerald was the great example of that.
You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you aford the time to take the chance to write what you wish.
The great writers just kept bringing them out. They didn't care if they repeated themselves.
The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.
At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded.
Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing
Horror would not annoy a soldier any more than the sight of a hammer annoys a carpenter. It is sentimental to pretend that horror is not the tool of the soldier, just as the hammer is the tool of the carpenter. We live off death and the threat of death and we must take it calmly and use it well.... Eventually I came to enjoy killing, as a pianist enjoys the Czerny which keeps his fingers limber for the Beethoven.
Ernest Hemingway did a great deal toward making the writer an acceptable public figure; obviously, he was no sissy.