“I think fiction is all about the exercise of the empathetic imagination.”
That’s a Jim Shepard quote from a new Rumpus interview.
Jim Shepard is a great writer and a very nice man.
And he has a new collection of stories out, called You Think That’s Bad.
“Kurt Vonnegut once described literature as the only art in which the audience plays the score, and if that’s a bit of a throwaway, it’s also astute. Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another being.”
— David Ulin, The Lost Art of Reading
A while back I saw Ulin (former editor and now book critic of the L.A. Times) interviewed in San Diego. He mentioned the Vonnegut quote.
I’ve thought about the important/vital role of the reader in literature, but the idea of the reader “playing the score” really struck me.
It’s true. Books bring so much to us, but we (as readers) also bring so much to them.
I really enjoyed this essay (posted on Glimmer Train’s website) by Lisa Catherine Harper.
It’s about being a writer and being a parent — two things I struggle with every day.
Here’ s a taste:
“Russell Banks has said that literature ‘teaches us what it means to be human.’ Parenting can do this, too. In the Venn diagram of my life and my art, the two occupations overlap consistently, sometimes productively. Both writing and parenting demand stamina and discipline. Both demand honesty. Both demand that I confront conflict. Both call on me to be generous to myself and others. Both demand a sense of purpose, which on some days is the only thing that keeps me from despair. Both routinely stage my failure. In order to write or parent well I must show up, every day. I must be fully engaged in finding meaning (and sometimes beauty) in what Gertrude Stein calls the eternal present.“
Here’s a photo from last week’s VAMP: Love Is for Suckers reading…
I have a little tiny something (called “Morning”) in the new issue of Bluestem Magazine.
You can also hear me read the story. If you’re so inclined.
Edited by the amazing Roxane Gay, the issue also features work by Tawnysha Greene, Len Kuntz, Gary Moshimer, Robert Swartwood and many others.
