I just watched a great interview to Ernesto Sábato, an Argentinian writer, author of The Tunnel (among other books), championed by writers like Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, and Graham Greene. After graduating with a PhD in physics, he quits science and communism, and dedicates his life to writing and painting.
A student once asked him about some sociological and historical aspects around another of his books (On Heroes and Tombs). Sábato replied that “a great novel is the one that considers those great characteristics of man: the question about God, loneliness, resentment, envy, love, the problem of death. These aspects are eternal, and that’s what the Ecclesiastes means when it says ‘nothing is new under the sun’; the man’s heart is eternal. All other aspects in a great novel, including sociological and historical ones, are almost a pretext.”
Continue reading For they live reality profoundly