“Do you think writers have to feel what they want the reader to feel when they’re writing?” I asked my friend Alex Chee in email this weekend, after reading a new story of his that powerfully evokes the kind of moony, depressive, sickeningly self-reflective state I’ve been in. “Because the end of this novel draft is completely kicking my ass. I . . .
“Twain is the day, Melville the night.” Roberto Bolaño on the influence of the “two main lines of the American novel”: he preferred Melville, but said he owed a greater debt to Twain. (Via; see also.)
“We see over and over love meeting pain, silence meeting silence, silence meeting nothing at all.” Elizabeth Bachner reads Ingeborg Bachmann-Paul Celan: Correspondence, letters and gaps spanning 20+ years.
My friend Misha Angrist, a former geneticist and the author of Here is a Human Being At the Dawn of Personal Genomics, answers some of my questions about DNA research at The Awl. Holy crap, Misha, you’re making your entire genome public! Are you nervous? It’s already done. All of my data are here. Frankly I don’t think anything in . . .
Talking to Grief Ah, grief, I should not treat you like a homeless dog who comes to the back door for a crust, for a meatless bone. I should trust you. I should coax you into the house and give you your own corner, a worn mat to lie on, your own water dish. You think I don’t know . . .