February 10, 2009
Those female writers
“I’m a feminist, and God knows I’m loyal to my sex, and you must remember that from my very early days, when this city was scarcely safe from buffaloes, I was in the struggle for equal rights for women. But when we paraded through the catcalls of men and when we chained ourselves to lampposts to try to get our equality– dear child, we didn’t foresee those female writers.” –Dorothy Parker, The Paris Review Interviews Vol. 1
January 28, 2009
Difficulty is artistically desirable
“Gaming is a much more resistant, frustrating medium than its cultural competitors. Older media have largely abandoned the idea that difficulty is a virtue; if I had to name one high-cultural notion that had died in my adult lifetime, it would be the idea that difficulty is artistically desirable. It’s a bit of an irony that difficulty thrives in the newest medium of all – and it’s not by accident, either. One of the most common complaints regular gamers make in reviewing new offerings is that they are too easy. (It would be nice if a little bit of that leaked over into the book world.)” –John Lanchester, “Is it Art?”
January 27, 2009
tolls like a bell for miles
“…because I read for entertainment, and I write to entertain. Period. Oh, I could decoct a brew of other, more impressive motivations and explanations. I could uncork more stuff about reader response theory, or the Lacanian parole. I could go on about the storytelling impulse and the need to make sense of experience through story. A spritz of Jung might scent the air. I could adduce Kafka’s formula: “A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.” I could go down to the cafe at the local mega-bookstore and take some wise words of Abelard or Koestler about the power of literature off a mug. But in the end– here’s my point– it would still all boil down to entertainment, and its suave henchman, pleasure. Because when the axe bites the ice, you feel an answering throb of delight all the way from your hands to your shoulders, and the blade tolls like a bell for miles.” –Michael Chabon, “Trickster in a Suit of Lights” from Maps and Legends
January 22, 2009
The taste for books was an early one
“The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away, and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder. To put it in a nutshell, leaving the novelist to smooth out the crumpled silk and all its implications, he was a nobleman afflicted with a love of literature.” –from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
January 14, 2009
When my head was not to be trusted
“A writer, if he is any good, does not describe. He invents or makes out of knowledge personal and impersonal and sometimes he seems to have unexplained knowledge which could come from racial or family experience. Who teaches the homing pigeon to fly as he does; where does a fighting bull get his bravery, or a hunting dog his nose? This is an elaboration or a condensation on that stuff we were talking about in Madrid that time when my head was not to be trusted.” –Ernest Hemingway, The Paris Review Interviews, I
January 9, 2009
Before you were born
“It was around here that I once said, ‘I used to work over there, before you were born.’
‘When I was a baby.’
‘No, before that. Before you were born.’
‘When I was just a teeny-tiny baby?’
‘No, before you were even here. Before you were in my tummy.’
‘I was…. Where.’
‘You were just a twinkle in your Daddy’s eye.’
‘I not a twinkle. I NOT a twinkle!!!’ And she started to kick and squawk. I suppose I did sound a bit smug; a little complacent about the idea that she was once non-existent. Too tough, really, for any age, but especially tough for two.” –Anne Enright, “Being Two” from Making Babies
December 20, 2008
I prefer weak tea!
“Daisy turned to Winterbourne, beginning to smile again. He was still more perpelexed, for this inconsequent smile made nothing clear, though it seemed to prove, indeed, that she had a sweetness and softness that reverted instinctively to the pardon of offences. ‘It has never occurred to Mr. Winterbourne to offer me any tea,’ she said, with her little tormenting manner.
‘I have offered you advice,’ Winterbourne rejoined.
‘I prefer weak tea!’ cried Daisy, and she went off with the brilliant Giovanelli.” –Henry James, Daisy Miller
December 18, 2008
A convenient mechanism
“‘The truth,’ Peta smiled, ‘is that there is no truth. Life is just a series of coincidences, accidents and random urges which we carefully forge– for our own sick reasons– into a convenient design. Everything is arbitrary. Only art exists to make the arbitrary congeal. No memory or God or love, even. Only art. The truth is simply am idea an idea, a structure which we employ– in very small doses– to render life bearable. It’s just a convenient mechanism, Kane, that’s all.” –from Darkmans by Nicola Barker
December 12, 2008
The fullest possible reckoning
“Along the way, during the editing process, or at least before the interview finally goes to press, the writer who has been interviewed is given the text to review and revise. This collaborative approach to the final product is unapologetically at odds with journalistic practice, where it is presumed that the reporter’s accuracy depends on strict independence from the subject’s influence. The Paris Review‘s purpose is not to catch writers off guard, but to elicit from them the fullest possible reckoning of what interests them most– their lives and work as writers, who they are and what they do all day. A few Paris Review interviews were accomplished in a single sitting, but it is far more common for them to be conducted over several seasons, even several years, with multiple sessions in person and many rounds of written correspondence as well.” –Philip Gourevitch, “Introduction”, The Paris Review Interviews, I
November 27, 2008
What's going on?
“…what’s going on? I’ll tell you what: life is going on. You have an opinion. I have an opinion. Life don’t have no opinion.” –Grace Paley, “Zagrowsky Tells”
