Reflections of a working writer and reader
You know that a blank wall is an appalling thing to look at. The wall of a museum, a canvas, a piece of film, or a guy sitting in front of a typewriter. Then, you start out to do something, that vague thing called creation. The beginning strikes awe within you. Edward Steichen
I didn’t read much during five weeks in Norway. Saving Room for Dessert by KC Constantine; I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson; and Jane Smiley’s Private Life. I didn’t quite finish William Trevor’s Love and Summer on the plane home, so I don’t suppose that counts.
Norway was great, met up with lots of friends, drank and ate too much, swam in the gulf stream, sat through a massive storm, the usual stuff.
Good to be back, though.
Listening to stories widens the imagination; telling them lets us leap over cultural walls, embrace different experiences, feel what others feel. Elif Shafak builds on this simple idea to argue that fiction can overcome identity politics. “Knowledge that takes you not beyond yourself is far worse than ignorance.” Thanks to Donigan Merritt for pointing this [...]
At the pool today, Julius, 8 foot tall anorexic Tanzanazian with eagle-eyes asks me why I have one toe with gold nail varnish. I don’t have an answer that comes anywhere near satisfying him. Later in the sauna, Azra, the Egyptian goddess, talks incessantly about herself, how she and her world interact, how the universe [...]
“It was the most electrifying image I’d ever seen of a woman of my generation. The cover immediately went up on my living-room wall, as if it were a holy icon. It symbolised for me not only women’s new liberation but the fusion of high art and popular culture. Now, two decades later, I think [...]
I don’t write that much. There are people who write every day, and it’s part of their life, and I go for months, and recently years, without writing fiction, for example. For me, it is not a matter of daily survival. And I’ve heard writers speak of something that they can’t help but do. The [...]
