May 22, 2008

An attentive reader

“It takes a lot of work, writing, writing, and rewriting to get the music exactly the way you want it to be. That music is a physical force. Not only do you write books physically, but you read books physically as well. There’s something about the rhythms of the language that correspond to the rhythms of our own bodies. An attentive reader is finding meaning in the book that can’t be articulated, finding them in his or her body. I think this is what so many people don’t understand about fiction. Poetry is supposed to be musical. But people don’t understand prose. They’re so used to reading journalism– clunky, functional sentences that convey factual information. Facts… just the surfaces of things.” –Paul Auster, The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers