What do you think?
Rate this book
272 pages, Hardcover
First published April 2, 2024
Maybe we haven’t spoken up for the others partly because of the unconscious, innate quality of our ties with them. Possibly we need the telescopic view — the distance of forgetting and the jolt of recognition as a remembrance surfaces — to know what we adore. Maybe we can only look back in longing, over time or space, when the object of our care is far away. And our old home is gone.
My presence in both of these subcultures is liminal — I float around on the margins. Neither fish nor fowl. Not really an activist, due to my aversion to slogans and crowds and open conflict. But also not a constant participant in the establishments of publishing or writing. Since the social and economic hub of publishing is New York, where I’ve chosen not to live. And since most literary writers also work as professors at universities, which I’ve chosen not to do.
If regret is the ghost of the past, for me, extinction is the ghost of the future. Now my worry is less about leaving than of what will be left. I hate the feeling. And yet that turning outward of fear may be the only thing of true value that I’ve ever learned.