Success is often described as a damaging thing for a writer, not so much because money is the root of all evil, but because it cuts him away from the material which is his strength. Arnold Bennett is probably the very best example of that in literature. When he was writing about the Five Towns, he wrote magnificently because he wrote of what he knew in his veins, what is in his blood, his sinews. That is what he had known in his childhood and early years. When big success came, and he came up to London and he moved in a vivid and fashionable world, among very much more interesting people, very much more important people than he had known as a boy, he wrote nothing that was convincing; he described luxury yachts, smart hotels, and restaurants in the Riviera. His work became... it was like cut flowers; it had no roots in itself, and this particular problem is worrying the novelist all the time because he knows he’s not getting the right material for his books.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Success is often described as a damaging thing for a writer, not so much because money is the root of all evil, but because it cuts him away from the material which is his strength. Arnold Bennett is probably the very best example of that in literature. When he was writing about the Five Towns, he wrote magnificently because he wrote of what he knew in his veins, what is in his blood, his sinews. That is what he had known in his childhood and early years. When big success came, and he came up to London and he moved in a vivid and fashionable world, among very much more interesting people, very much more important people than he had known as a boy, he wrote nothing that was convincing; he described luxury yachts, smart hotels, and restaurants in the Riviera. His work became... it was like cut flowers; it had no roots in itself, and this particular problem is worrying the novelist all the time because he knows he’s not getting the right material for his books." in the context of "Alec Waugh, (March 7, 1960 Portland State College), A Novelist on Novels" to mean that wisdom is timeless.