“ … the power of Joyce’s language and the story of Stephen Dedalus refusing to become a priest in order to take up the mantle of art were so compelling to me. Dedalus wants to form the “uncreated conscience of his race.” That’s what I wanted to do, even though I didn’t really know what it meant. I do remember thinking, however, that to be a writer was the best thing a person could be. It seemed to promise maximum alertness to life. It seemed holy to me, and almost religious. ”
Whenever I read interviews with authors I usually cringe at the inevitable when-and-why-did-you-decide-to-become-a-writer question, but Jeffrey Eugenides totally killed it here.
(Source: theparisreview.org)
Writing a leaving-Ohio poem for workshop next week as a companion to the going-to-Ohio poem I wrote last fall, and it’s kind of wistful and odd to memorialize the end of an adventure rather than the beginning or middle of one.
It’s fantastic how common sense did not win out when I was packing for school and that I did bring fourteen books of poetry with me, because the fact that I can sit at my desk and look up and have such an abundance of other peoples’ words on hand for inspiration is pretty excellent.
I didn’t get to sleep until four because I was all caught up in a writing frenzy, which was amazing, but now all I want to do is curl up in bed and watch My So-Called Life and fall asleep at eight o’ clock, and instead I’ve got to go to some master class about Gregorian chants. Boo.
Sometimes I think I should go back to being a fashion blogger. Sure, it started out as a thing of teenage vanity, but it also inspired me and forced me to not dress lazily and enabled me to connect with some pretty great people and totally satisfied my obsessive need to document things.
I wrote my Barnard transfer essay about fashion and it’s one of my favorite non-poetry things I’ve ever written. The question was something like what will you add to the fabric of the Barnard community and my answer was a lot of denim.
(Source: rosalin-e)
“ Interviewer: Some people say they can’t understand
your writing, even after they read it two or three times.
What approach would you suggest for them?
William Faulkner: Read it four times. ”
From this spectacular interview. Don’t give up on Faulkner, people.
Posting this because it’s a terrific little article, but also to mention that Roger Rosenblatt is one of the most intelligent and inspiring people I have ever been in the same room with and I sort of wish I had taken his memoir workshop.
Only now do I realize that I never wrote about any of the places I saw on my cruise last winter. Not that a couple of hours in a tourist-swarmed port really helps you get to know a place, but I saw so many interesting things.
