9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 People often talk about the death of literature 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I think people have been speaking about it since shortly after 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the first work of literature was ever made 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but there's more and more talk about it 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and propelled by diminishing readership, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 by what feels like an increasing apathy, or even anxiety , or even 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 mistrust of literature and the movement towards screens, you know everything beign on a screen 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and what would that mean for books which 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 aren't very well served on a screen, it's not 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that you can't read a book on a screen perfectly well, but you can't read a book on a screen 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that also has email and your calendar and texting, books can't compete with those kind of media 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 so , we wonder what people will read books 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and i think that there are still things and there will always be things that only 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 literature can do, only literature can communicate 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 i don't think literature is necessarily any better whatever that means than film or dance or music, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in fact i'm often drawn personally more to film and dance than i am to literature 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but i know that there are moments in my life where i need literature and only literature 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So for example, the mother of my oldest friend passed away a week ago and I went 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to visit her in Washington DC, I live in New York and i was quite worried about what to say and 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 how to fill what i thought might be very awkward, very painful silences 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I brought poems, about 20 poems, and I read them to her and we talked about them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and in that moment when we are together, we are confronting this, you know the biggest moment of life 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 whih is death. we relied on poetry and I think that poems and stories and novels are very helpful 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 exactly when we most need language, the most sort of dire, or urgent or existential moments of life. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Novels are meant to be read over the course of many hours or of many days 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and even a story takes half an hour to read, and I just wasn't sure in this case what her energy 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 level would be, so I wanted them to be quite small, but eventhough that's the case, it's also true 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that poetry is the most condensed form and literature 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and in certain ways it's the most pure form. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I don't think that novels are any less good than poetry but i think that novels have a lot 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to learn from poetry, in terms of what's possible, how direct on can be, how concentrated 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 language can be and how evocative and resonant. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You know, sometimes I feel novels make the mistake of being too much like their own description 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 somebody says ''what's this book about'' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 my dream is to write a novel where somebody would have to say ''i could tell you, I suppose, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but that would really miss the point, you'd just have to read it'' That to my mind is a good novel 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a novel that it's its own synopsis, it's an expanded version of this synopsis, comes awfully 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 close to television actually, I think that novels can still do what poetry does in terms of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 being kind of ineffable or mysterious or not quit graspable, just on a much larger scale 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 All of my life i've been more drwan to the visual than to literature and even still 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 when i'm feeling like i can't remember why i wanted to be a writer, i don't go to books, i go to paintings 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 or to sculpture. To me the distinctions have been drawn too sharply 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the difference between musician, a writer, an artist a dancer, we've categorised them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 segregated them, so that there's very litle overlap, but in fact they're just people 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who want to make things that you could say have no use, you know everything in life has a use 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the person who made the camera that this is being shot with, made so it records something like this 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and television or computer that someone's watching it on was made with specific functions in mind 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a bridge is made so that people can go from one land mass to another 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 novels and paintings and songs they might really have effects in the world, they might be political, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they might be entertaining, they might be objects of commerce, but they're not really made for 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 any of those reasons, I think they were made for their own sake 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I think that anyone who makes something for its own sakem, whether you try to have it published 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 or whether you're just rearrenging twiggs on the ground because it pleases you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 people who do that are artists and because we live in a world in which you have to have a job 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and it's expected that you'll grow within your job 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and because we like to have an answer to what is it that you do. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you know you meet someone at a party, they say ''what do you do?'' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it makes us uncomfortable not to have an answer, but the truth is, the different art forms are 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 much more similar than they are different 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When i'm not working on a book, I am somebody who just moves through the world and sees things 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and tries to remember them, but usually doesn't 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 hears jokes and tries to remember them but usually doesn't 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and so on, and has ideas that disappear 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but when i'm writing i save those things 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 so that i can use them, you know rearrange them 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 nothing comes from nothing. I think, there's an impression that books or art 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 making art is a much more romantically creative act than it is, as if inspiration strikes 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and suddenly something appears, but it hasn't been my experience at all. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it's much more about beign attentinve to what's around and starting to know what you like 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and what you find useful and then collecting those things and then figuring out what the most 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 pleasing arrangement of them is for you 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 there's nothing objective about it, it's not the case that someone will necessarily like it 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but it really does feel like making collage with the whole world as you're a cuboard of 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 things to arrange. Certainly in art i think, most important things happen in the subconscious level 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 when i approach a writing project i don't think of it like that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in fact, and i say this not as a joke or to disparage myself, i really don't think about much at all. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I'm very open to what do I feel like workign on, what's interesting to me right now, what am i curious about 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but i never think what the potential use of something will be, like i said before 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 there's a quality of art that's useless 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in the very very best way, it's the highest compliment i can pay 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and if i started thinking about what i would achieve for myself psychologically 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 or in search of meaning or catharsis, that's just another kind of use 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in almost the same way like trying to make something you would sell for money 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it's not to say that these two things might, you know, wouldn't be good in your life, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 but i don't think that they make a good work of art they're not a good starting point.