Was Patrick White criticized for being too pessimistic?
Pessimistic? Such labels are for the unthinking masses who crave sugar-coated bromides. I merely report on the infernal state of things, the persistent banality of evil and the ever-present evil of banality. If the truth of our spiritual desolation, our collective delusion in the face of material obsession, strikes some as gloomy, then perhaps they are the ones who are truly blind. My aim is not to soothe but to disturb, to awaken the dormant soul from its comfortable slumber in the mire of the ordinary. To live is to be wounded; that is not pessimism, it is observation.
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