Experiments with the "as if" of fiction are often more lively in poetry and criticism and other modes of writing than in weak short stories or novels. Ben Lerner More Quotes by Ben Lerner More Quotes From Ben Lerner I'm defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre. Ben Lerner literary-genre dying fiction The transpersonal is more awe-inspiring, more exciting than the thing we confuse it for. Ben Lerner awe-inspiring awe exciting I don't want to write poems that are just really clear about how I'm aware of all the traps involved in writing poetry; I don't want to write fiction that's about the irresponsibility of writing fiction and I've thrown out a lot of writing that I think was ultimately tainted by that kind of self-awareness. Ben Lerner self writing thinking The strange thing about the apocalypse is that it's uneven. For some people, it goes one way and for others another way, so that there's always this shifting relation to the narrative of the disaster. Sometimes apocalypses are just structural fictions, and sometimes they're real. Sometimes a narrative requires an end - the fact that the beginning was always leading somewhere becomes clear at the end. There's an idea that we're always in the middle, but we posit this apocalyptic end in order to also be able to project into the past or the beginning. I think that's true and false. Ben Lerner real past thinking Shaving is a way to start the workday by ritually not cutting your throat when you've the chance. Ben Lerner shaving cutting way Art has to offer something other than stylized despair. Ben Lerner offers despair art If I was a poet, I had become one because poetry, more intensely than any other practice, could not evade its anachronism and marginality and so constituted a kind of acknowledgment of my own preposterousness, admitting my bad faith in good faith, so to speak. Ben Lerner admitting kind practice Many of the left thinkers that really matter to me - that formed a big part of my thinking about politics and art - emphasize how capitalism is a totality, how there's no escape from it, no outside. Ben Lerner matter art thinking I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the texture of time as it passed, life's white machine. Ben Lerner important reading white I have no interest in artists who are purely affirmative, who've made a commercialized fetish of the culture's stupidity. Ben Lerner stupidity artist culture Maggie Nelson cuts through our culture's prefabricated structures of thought and feeling with an intelligence whose ferocity is ultimately in the service of love. No piety is safe, no orthodoxy, no easy irony. The scare quotes burn off like fog. Ben Lerner fog cutting feelings I think the parable is a peculiar way of saying that redemption is immanent whether or not it's imminent, that the world to come is in a sense always already here, if still unavailable. I find this idea powerful for several reasons. For one thing, it's an antidote to despair. Ben Lerner powerful ideas thinking Just in case God isn't dead, our astronauts carry sidearms. Ben Lerner astronaut cases I’ll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid. Ben Lerner cities would-be way What interests me about fiction is, in part, its flickering edge between realism and where a tear in the fabric of a story lets in some other sort of light. Ben Lerner tears light fiction I remember I had this recurring dream that we were playing a night game and instead of eye black we had mashed up the glowing bodies of fireflies and put that under our eyes. So our faces were glowing - a kind of night vision. Ben Lerner firefly eye dream The scare quotes burn off like fog. Ben Lerner fog scare Laser technology has fulfilled our people's ancient dream of a blade so fine that the person it cuts remains standing and alive until he moves and cleaves. Until we move, none of us can be sure that we have not already been cut in half, or in many pieces, by a blade of light. It is safest to assume that our throats have already been slit, that the slightest alteration in our postures will cause the painless severance of our heads. Ben Lerner cutting dream moving I was a violent, bipolar, compulsive liar. I was a real American. Ben Lerner bipolar real liars When I was a kid and we played baseball we used to use that "eye black" stuff sometimes - that kind of grease you put under your eyes to reduce glare or something. We only used it, of course, to look cool; it's not like we were any better prepubescent athletes for reducing glare. Ben Lerner athlete baseball kids
