Barth on fiction

It's particularly disquieting to suspect not only that one is a fictional character but that the fiction one's in—the fiction one is—is quite the sort one least prefers.
John Barth

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mahmoud Darwish, "The Earth Is Closing On Us"

The earth is closing on us, pushing us through the last passage, and we tear off our limbs to pass through. The earth is squeezing us. I wish we were its wheat so we could die and live again. I wish the earth was     our mother So she'd be kind to us. I wish we were pictures on the rocks for our dreams to carry As mirrors. We saw the faces of those to be killed by the last of us in the last defense of the soul. We cried over their children's feast. We saw the faces of those who'll throw our children Out of the windows of the last space. Our star will hang up in mirrors. Where should we go after the last frontiers? Where should the birds fly after the last sky? Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air? We will write our names with scarlet steam. We will cut off the head of the song to be finished by our flesh. We will die here, here in the last passage. Here and here our blood will plant its olive tree. Mahmoud Darwish
Read more

Eavon Boland, "An Elegy for My Mother in which She Scarcely Appears"

I knew we had to grieve for the animals a long time ago: weep for them, pity them. I knew it was our strange human duty to write their elegies after we arranged their demise. I was young then and able for the paradox. I am older now and ready for the question: What happened to them all? I mean to those old dumb implements which have no eyes to plead with us like theirs no claim to make on us like theirs? I mean— there was a singing kettle. I want to know why no one tagged its neck or ringed the tin base of its extinct design or crouched to hear its rising shriek in winter or wrote it down with the birds in their blue sleeves of air torn away with the trees that sheltered them. And there were brass fire dogs which lay out all evening on the grate and in the heat thrown at them by the last of the peat fire but no one noted down their history or put them in the old packs under slate-blue moonlight. There was a wooden clotheshorse, absolutely steady, without sinews, with no mane and no mea...
Read more

O'Rourke, "Poem of Regret for an Old Friend"

What you did wasn’t so bad. You stood in a small room, waiting for the sun. At least you told yourself that. I know it was small, but there was something, a kind of pulped lemon, at the low edge of the sky. No, you’re right, it was terrible. Terrible to live without love in small rooms with vinyl blinds listening to music secretly, the secret music of one’s head which can’t be shared. A dream is the only way to breathe. But you must find a more useful way to live. I suppose you’re right this was a failure: to stand there so still, waiting for — what? When I think about this life, the life you led, I think of England, of secret gardens that never open, and novels sliding off the bed at night where the small handkerchief of darkness settles over one’s face. Meghan O’Rourke
Read more