Literature is Connected to Ones Roots

Literature is completely connected with one's origin, with one's roots. The great masters were all rooted in their people. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Gogol were as Russian, as Ukrainian as they could be. Write about the people you know best, whether they are Jews or Protestants or Turks.

If you write about the things and the people you know best, you discover your roots, even if they are new roots, partial roots. In other words, you should not deny your father's roots or your mother's roots. You cannot write a love story of two human beings without dealing with their background-what nation they belonged to, what language their fathers spoke at home, and where they grew up. When you talk about a writer you always mention his nation, his language. Writers, more than any other artists, belong to their nation, their language, their history, their culture. They are both highly individualistic and highly attached to their origin.

When you want to write a letter, let's say to someone who lives in Poland, you cannot address it to just "a man." It will never arrive, because there are three or four billion men in the world. You have to address it to Mr. So-and-So, give the name of the country, the city, the street, the number of the house, and sometimes the number of the apartment. The same thing is true in literature. Of course, we know that you are writing about a man, but the question is what man, where does he come from, where does he live, what language does he speak? You have to give his spiritual address. Of course, an address in literature is different from an address on an envelope, but the idea is the same. Go from the general to the particular, until we know there is only one such person. Literature assumes that no men or women are completely alike. Individuality is the axiom of literature.

from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer