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Quote by Ben Lerner

“Henry James claim that if you want to be a novelist you should be somebody on whom nothing is lost.”

Quote by Ben Lerner

Author

Ben Lerner, born on February 4, 1979, is an American poet known for his unique style and profound reflections on contemporary social issues. more

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“The problem is that if you're self-conscious about being a person on whom nothing is lost, isn't something lost - some kind of presence? You're distracted by trying to be totally, perfectly impressionable.”

Ifs Trying Kind Persons Self Problem Lost Conscious Distracted Self Conscious Impressionable

Author:Ben Lerner

“Calmness is the cradle of power.”

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“I guess when I'm frightened or in pain or maybe very bored I've tried to hold myself together by imposing a narrative order on the experience as it happens.”

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“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.”

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Author:Ben Lerner

“I'm trying to be somebody on whom the experience is lost by supplanting it with its telling. I definitely do that in medical contexts, even in trivial ones.”

Trying Lost Medical Supplanting

Author:Ben Lerner

“I'm aware of narrating certain experiences as they happen or obliterating those experiences with narrative and then those stories - not the experiences themselves - might become material for art. This kind of transformation shows up a lot in 10:04 because the book tracks the transposition of fact into fiction in the New Yorker stor”

Kind Art Book Facts Stories Shows Might Happens Certain Fiction Materials Transformation Track Narrative New Yorkers

Author:Ben Lerner

“Maybe now if you're not an exhibitionist you're private. Or maybe it's just that for a lot of people - sometimes in interesting ways, sometimes in stupid ways - there's no division between the art object and what surrounds it.”

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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.”

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Author:Ben Lerner

“I'm defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre.”

Humans Fiction Dying Capacity Genre Human Capacity Literary Genre

Author:Ben Lerner

“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.”

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Author:Ben Lerner