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Hemon + Granta

Aleksandar Hemon, winner of new 4th novel prize, sits on porch and discusses essay that appears in Granta’s Chicago issue.

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Evolutionary (and writerly) advantages of depression?

Emma and I enjoyed the novelist Margaret Drabble’s recent observation that depression is useful “for stripping off ways of getting through life that prevent you from having to think.” “Happy and buoyant don’t force you into action on the page,” Drabble (pictured, in an earlier era) told Daphne Merkin. These kinds of arguments in favor of depression as a creative . . .

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