"I don't go about self-consciously obtaining impressions," said Guy a little angrily. "I would as soon search for local colour. Personally I very much doubt if any impressions after eighteen or nineteen help the artist. As it seems to me, all experience after that age is merely valuable for maturing and putting into proportion the more vital experiences of childhood. And I'm not at all sure that there isn't in every artist a capacity for development which proceeds quite independently of externals. I speculate sometimes as to what would be the result upon a really creative temperament of being wrecked at twenty-two on a desert island. I say twenty-two, because I do count as valuable the academic influence that only begins to be effective after eighteen."
"And what is your notion about this literary Crusoe?" asked Maurice.
"Well, I fancy that his work would not suffer at all, that it would ripen, just as certain fruit ripens independently of sun, that he would display in fact quite normally the characteristic growth of the artist."
"But where would he obtain his reaction?" Maurice asked.
"From himself. If that isn't possible for some people I don't see how you're going to make a distinction between literature and journalism."
"Some journalism is literature."
"Only very bad journalism," Guy argued. "The journalistic mind experiences a quick reaction, the creative writer a very slow one. The journalist is affected by extremes: and he is continually aware of the impression they are making at the moment: contrariwise the creative artist is always unaware of the impression at the moment it is made; he feels it from within first and it develops according to his own characteristics. Let me give you an example. The journalist is like a man who, seeing a mosquito in the act of biting him, claps his hand down and kills it. The creative artist isn't aware of having been bitten until he sees the swelling ... big or small according to his constitution. It is his business to cure the swelling, not to bother about the insect."
"Your theories may be all right for great creative artists," said Maurice. "And I suppose you're willing to take the risk of stagnation?"
"I'm not a great creative artist," said Guy quickly. "At the same time I'm damned if I'm a journalist. No, the effect of Plashers Mead on me has been to make me long to be a man of action. So far it has been stimulating, and without external help I've been able to reach the conclusion that my poems were never worth writing.... I wrote because I wanted to: I don't believe I ever had to."
"Then what are you going to do now?" asked Maurice.