“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.” ThinkingWantWritingKindSelfFictionClearAwarenessInvolvedSelf AwarenessThrownTrapsWriting FictionWriting PoetryTaintedIrresponsibility Author:Ben Lerner
“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.” IfsThinkingWorldWayStillsIdeasReasonPowerfulOne ThingDespairRedemptionPeculiarAntidoteParables Author:Ben Lerner
“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.” ThinkingArtMatterBigsLeftCapitalismThinkerTotality Author:Ben Lerner
“I like to think - knowing that it's an enabling fiction - of those moments as fragments from a world to come, a world where price isn't the only measure of value.” ThinkingWorldMomentsValuesFictionKnowingFragmentsEnabling Author:Ben Lerner
“I think that sexual pleasure and the weird color of the sky after a storm or the stream of tail lights across the bridge or the way silence can thin or thicken before music starts - all these things have to be harnessed by the political. The libidinal has to be harnessed by the political.” ThinkingWayLightPoliticalPleasureSilenceSkyColorStormBridgesStreamsTails Author:Ben Lerner
“I think the anti-intellectualism of a lot of contemporary fiction is a kind of despairing of literature's ability to be anything more than perfectly bound blog posts or transcribed sitcoms.” ThinkingKindLiteratureAbilityFictionBoundsContemporaryPostsBlogsSitcomIntellectualismContemporary Fiction Author:Ben Lerner
“I don't think "I'm going to publish this as fiction" but I think "I'm going to tell this story to a friend" and then I start telling the story in my mind as the experience transpires as a way of pretending it's already happened.” ThinkingWayMindStoriesFictionHappenedPretendingPublish Author:Ben Lerner
“Your interviews or blog posts or whatever are less supplements to your novel than part of it. I'm not private, but I believe in literary form - I'll use my life as material for art (I don't know how not to do this) and I'll use art as a way of exploring that passage of life into art and vice versa, but that's not the same thing as thinking that any of the details of my life are interesting or relevant on their own.” ThinkingKnowsWayBelieveArtUseFormI BelieveInterestingNovelKnow HowMaterialsVicesDetailsI Believe InPostsInterviewsPassagesRelevantExploringBlogsVice VersaSupplements Author:Ben Lerner
“I don't think it's always a sign of respect for persons (inside or outside of fiction) to pretend to be able to represent, to have access to, their multi-dimensionality at every moment. That doesn't imply people aren't multi-dimensional.” PeopleThinkingPersonsMomentsAbleFictionAccess Author:Ben Lerner
“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.” PeopleThinkingRealSometimesPastStrangeRelationDisasterApocalypseApocalyptic Author:Ben Lerner
