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Reflections on Teaching, Reading, and Writing... and Art
Bruce Schauble
Other Spaces
Recommended Reading
- A Gentleman in Moscow (Towles)
- A Tale for the Time Being (Ozeki)
- Augustus (Williams)
- Cloud Atlas (Mitchell)
- Early Decision (Crawford)
- Educated (Westover)
- Milkman (Burns)
- Mink River (Doyle)
- Outline Trilogy (Cusk)
- The Autobiography of Red (Carson)
- The Blazing World (Hustvedt)
- The Falconer (Czapnik)
- The Golden Legend (Aslam)
- The Interestings (Wolitzer)
- The Overstory (Powers)
- The Road (McCarthy)
- Transatlantic (McCann)
- Foster (Keegan)
- The Deluge (Markley)
- This is Happiness (Williams)
- North Woods (Mason)
- Tom Lake (Patchett)
- Lessons in Chemistry (Garmus)
- Tremor (Teju Cole)
- The Future (Alderman)
Elaborations
Only the individual who has never written and never dealt with images can say that there are no questions in his sphere, just a solid mass of answers...You are right to demand that an artist take a conscious attitude toward his work, but you confuse two concepts: resolving a question and posing a question correctly. Only the second is required of the artist. In Anna Karenina and Onegin not one question is resolved, but you are satisfied solely because all the questions in them are posed correctly.
- Anton Chekhov
__________________
From the age of six I was in the habit of drawing all kinds of things. Although I had produced numerous designs by my fiftieth year, none of my works done before my seventieth is really worth counting. At the age of seventy-three I have come to understand the true form of animals, insects and fish and the nature of plants and trees. Consequently, by the age of eighty-six I will have made more and more progress, and at ninety I will have got closer to the essence of art. At the age of one hundred I will have reached a magnificent level and at one hundred and ten each dot and each line will be alive. I would like to ask those who outlive me to observe that I have not spoken without reason.
- Hokusai
"One asks not only for the courage of his convictions, but for the courage of his doubts, in a world of dangerously passionate certainties"
- Eric Sevareid
2 comments:
Very curious about the Miranda July book--I love the two films of hers that I've seen.
Yeah, I dunno. I picked it up because one of my students was reading it and she said she thought it was great. I haven't seen her films, but the stories are trying pretty hard, maybe a little too hard sometimes, to be innovative and edgy and hip. The characters are mostly older teenagers and 20-somethings who seem to be acting out because they have no other sense of who they are. Awkward and sometimes implausible sex, humor that wants to be quirky but seems a little sad. I can see why a teenager would think these stories are daring and fresh, but to my eye and ear they seem largely self-absorbed and angsty. I've not found one yet—I'm a little more than halfway through—that really works for me. By way of illustration, here's the last paragraph from "This Person:
In the bathtub this person pushes the bubbles around and listens to the sound of millions of them popping at once. This person's breasts barely jut out of the water. By now everyone must have realized that this person is not coming back to the picnic. Everyone was wrong; this person is not who they thought this person was. This person plunges underwater and moves her hair around like a sea anemone. This person can stay underwater for an impressively long time but only in a bathtub. This person wonders if there will ever be an Olympic contest for holding your breath underwater. If there were such a contest, this person would surely win it. An Olympic medal might redeem this person in the eyes of everyone this person has ever known. But no such contest exists, so there will be no redeeming. This person mourns the fact that she has ruined her one chance to be loved by everyone; as this person climbs into bed, the weight of this tragedy seems to bear down upon this person's chest. And it is a comforting weight, almost human in heft. This person sighs. This person's eyes begin to close, this person sleeps.
- B
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