Fiction multiplies ambiguity and is written with the wrong, hesitant hand

Evidence

Fiction isn’t made by scraping the bones of topicality for the last shreds and sinews, to be processed into mechanically recovered prose. Like journalism, it deals in ideas as well as facts, but also in metaphors, symbols and myths. It multiplies ambiguity. It’s about the particular, which suggests the general: about inner meaning, seen with the inner eye, always glimpsed, always vanishing, always more or less baffling, and scuffled onto the page hesitantly, furtively, transgressively, by night and with the wrong hand. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 17

Categorization

• SEED: Near-perfect craft credo usable as epigraph or essay prompt on the difference between fiction and journalism.
• XREF: Directly answers and expands Amis’s right-hand/left-hand split quoted in para 8; a defining statement of Mantel’s aesthetic. — connects to: Fiction multiplies ambiguity by exploring particulars that suggest general truths; Historical fiction offers a subjective interpretation rather than a photographic replica — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 766; A verbatim-seeming fiction can exceed invented drama — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 833 (+7 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 17

Broader Connections

• Writers struggle with the physical act of writing unlike other professionals. #expands (0.70) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 43
• A verbatim-seeming fiction can exceed invented drama #expands (0.60) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 833
• Novels’ formal features, not stated sympathy, determine their political effects #corroborates (0.60)
• Writers should leave readers hungry and mildly estranged, not fully accommodated #corroborates (0.55) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 873
• Transparent realist form cannot escape the reader’s prevailing prejudices #corroborates (0.55)
• A novel can expose stereotypes yet trap its own character within them #corroborates (0.50)
• Interpolated canonical novels destabilize a memoir’s ideological message rather than merely authorizing it #corroborates (0.45)