Janet Malcolm
Janet Malcolm
Janet Malcolmis an American writer, journalist on staff at The New Yorker magazine, and collagist. She is the author of Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, In the Freud Archivesand The Journalist and the Murderer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
way fidelity characteristics
Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.
beach grieving self
The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe. The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the grieves and shames of others.
photography two scratches
If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph.
impulse malice remains
Malice remains its animating impulse.
character journalism invention
The 'I' character in journalism is almost pure invention.
photography responsibility unique
[The] arresting of time is photography's unique capacity, and the decision of when to click the shutter is the photographer's chief responsibility.
powerful cameras description
The camera is simply not the supple and powerful instrument of description that the pen is.
art always-trying interesting
I was always trying to take art photographs, but the most interesting pictures were the snapshots. The artsy pictures were boring, always.
art reality odds
The heavy odds against finding the desired... work of art in the mess and flux of life, as opposed to the serene orderliness of imagined reality, give a special tense dazzle and an atmosphere of tour de force to any photographs that succeed in the search.
ashes analysis mouths
All analyses end badly. Each 'termination' leaves the participants with the taste of ashes in their mouths; each is absurd; each is a small, pointless death. Psychoanalysis cannot tolerate happy endings; it casts them off the way the body's immunological system casts off transplanted organs.
trying patient form
Analysts keep having to pick away at the scab that the patient tries to form between himself and the analyst to cover over his wounds. The analyst keeps the surface raw, so that the wound will heal properly.
agreement hands order
Society mediates between the extremes of, on the one hand, intolerably strict morality and, on the other, dangerously anarchic permissiveness through an unspoken agreement whereby we are given leave to bend the rules of the strictest morality, provided we do so quietly and discreetly. Hypocrisy is the grease that keeps society functioning in an agreeable way, by allowing for human fallibility and reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable human needs for order and pleasure.
writing done states
Writing cannot be done in a state of desirelessness,
loneliness stupid ignorance
Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.