How we cite our quotes: (Part.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
In this connection I must mention too a not altogether rational idea which I had nourished more or less vaguely for a long time: the notion that before I could achieve greatness as a writer I would have to pass through some ordeal. For this ordeal I had waited in vain. Even total war (I was never in uniform) failed to ruffle my life. I seemed doomed to quietness. (Bradley Pearson's Foreword: par. 14)
If we assume that the events that Bradley Pearson describes in The Black Prince occurred at some point in the late '60s or early '70s, then it stands to reason that Bradley would have been in his late twenties or early-to-mid thirties during WWII. How is it that a young man living in London during the Second World War could fail to have his life "ruffled" by such a cataclysmic event? What character traits does Bradley reveal about himself in this passage?
Quote #5
Oh come, be humbler, let cheerfulness break in! I can't think why you worry so. Thinking of yourself as a 'writer' is part of your trouble. Why not just think of yourself as someone who very occasionally writes something, who may in the future write something? Why make a life drama out of it? (1.3.231)
Arnold Baffin has a point here, but he and Bradley Pearson also have somewhat different definitions for the term "writer." Arnold thinks of himself as a writer because he treats writing as his full-time job and as a result has produced a significant body of work over the course of his career. By contrast, Bradley thinks of writing as a spiritual vocation, and he doesn't attach much importance to the fact that he hasn't actually published very much.
Quote #6
I felt a sizzling warmth in my coat pocket wherein I had thrust the folded manuscript of my review of Arnold's novel. Arnold Baffin's work was a congeries of amusing anecdotes loosely garbled into 'racy stories' with the help of half-baked unmeditated symbolism. The dark powers of imagination were conspicuous by their absence. Arnold Baffin wrote too much, too fast. Arnold Baffin was really just a talented journalist. (1.3.238)
Does being "a talented journalist" make Arnold Baffin less of a writer, in Bradley Pearson's point of view, or does it simply make him less of a novelist?