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I only have 50 minutes before I need to leave (again), and the next few days are super-busy (again), so I’m trying to come up with something good to leave here while I’m away. Hence, here is a wonderful review of Mavis Gallant, a new favorite of mine:
One of the most striking things about Gallant’s work, including The Pegnitz Junction, is its cinematic quality, shifting perspectives and chronology, resulting in what Lahiri calls “narrative that refuses to sit still”. Gallant is dismissive of analysing or explaining her work, and distrustful of academic attempts to do so. “If I thought about what I do, I think I’d stop writing. Really,” she says with feeling. “I would tell you if I knew. It just happens.” For her “the first flash of fiction is like a curtain going up on stage, and you wait to see what’s happening. The characters aren’t speaking to me, exactly, but I get lines of dialogue. I know who they are, what they do and what they are saying to each other. And I know more than they do, because I know about all of them.”
And here is the best video I’ve watched this week. And probably the several weeks before that. Have fun.
