Posts filed under “writing”.
Elif Shafak on Fiction and Imagination
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 [...]
Spare Ribs
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 [...]
Zadie Smith on Reading and Writing
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 [...]
My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru
One of the characters in this novel asks Mike, the narrator: “What would freedom look like?” The following is from page 2: In the sitting room there’s a photo of Miranda, which I took on a cold weekend walk at the Norfolk coast. She’s standing with her back to the camera, looking out to sea. [...]
Octavio Paz – Separation
Octavio Paz From his 1990 Nobel acceptance speech : The feeling of separation is bound up with the oldest and vaguest of my memories: the first cry, the first scare. Like every child I built emotional bridges in the imagination to link me to the world and to other people. I lived in a town [...]
