As Berger wrote in a 1979 essay about a (completely fictional) nude by Frans Hals: ‘Stories arrive in the head in order to be told. Sometimes paintings do the same.’ What happens when writing on fictional objects begins to resemble art criticism? Does modern fiction’s aversion to describing art speak to a more generally held doubt in writing’s ability to ever achieve the (apparently) direct representational power of a work of art? Or does telling stories offer us as good a way as any for talking about art?
“I reject the notion that we’re running out of ideas,” says David Krakauer, the president of the Santa Fe Institute. “You suggest that the problem is invention. But I see no evidence that people are less ingenious. I see the problem as moving their genius into the world. The problem is the second stage of Schumpeterian innovation.”
What exactly does that mean? It means that the fault is not in our minds, but in our markets.
I’m going to keep that habit up, but I’m also going to relish my exceptions, too. Those are the moments I can read like I did as a kid, when I read by flashlight under the covers, devouring books I couldn’t tell you anything about the next day. It reminds me of the pure, escapist joy of really losing yourself in a book, which is something I never want to lose.
Wanda M. Morris' All Her Little Secrets is a carefully constructed thriller wrapped in a narrative about racism, gentrification, and being the only Black person in an all-white environment.
It's also a story about how we can move away from home and try to change who we are, but we're almost always unable to escape the past.
Fagan once again examines the way people are affected by unhealthy spaces. Having survived the state care system that bounced her among dozens of homes, she writes about placement and displacement with an arresting mix of insight and passion.
The birds in a V-pattern
and the denuded tree with a dozen mighty branches