Reading Gide

"Fiction there is - and history. Certain critics of no little discernment have considered that fiction is history which might have taken place, and history fiction which has taken place. We are, indeed, forced to acknowledge that the novelist's art often compels belief, just a reality sometimes defies it. Alas! there exists and order of minds so skeptical that they deny the possibility of and fact as soon as it diverges from the commonplace. It is not for them that I write."
André Gide, Lafcadio's Adventures, 1914
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