6 September 2009
I like these two articles in today’s NY Sunday Times:
Former Simon & Schuster executive Joni Evans on publishing before Darwinian forces took over (she herself chose flight over fight) — “When Publishing Had Scents and Sounds.”
Alexis Mainland on subway readers (drat! I’d been wanting to write this article myself). I’d never thought of it this way before, but she makes the good point that the subway — absent cell or Internet connection — is the last oasis of low-tech, where reading, thinking, observing, napping, or listening to music are your best options.
2 September 2009
Michiko Kakutani likes Lorrie Moore’s new book, A Gate at the Stairs, in which “Ms. Moore grapples… with the precariousness of life and the irretrievable losses that accumulate over the years.” I’m looking forward to reading it.
And I’ve had Lorrie Moorie on the brain. A friend recently sent me the following Moore quote, from an interview in the September issue of Elle:
The detachment of the artist is kind of creepy. It’s kind of rude, and yet really it’s where art comes from. It’s not the same as courage. It’s closer to bad manners than to courage. [...] if you’re going to be a writer, you basically have to say, ‘This is just who I am…’ There’s a certain indefensibility about it. It’s not about loving your community and taking care of it; you’re not attached to the chamber of commerce. It’s a little unsafe. You have to be willing to have only four friends, not 11.
My friend thinks this quote is a bit self-justifying. Maybe, but… is that a bad thing? I read it as self-accepting. I read it as realistic. Maybe it’s one of those things that’s better left unsaid, but truth is often like that. I think of these words from Susan Sontag:
Love the truth above wanting to be good.
There is a definite gender element to all this. A man is less compelled to self-justify his detachment; a woman, I think, more likely feels that she needs to.
So thank you, Ms. Moore.
