Maggie Nelson cuts through our culture's prefabricated structures of thought and feeling with an intelligence whose ferocity is ultimately in the service of love. No piety is safe, no orthodoxy, no easy irony. The scare quotes burn off like fog.
I’ll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid. - Ben Lerner
I’ll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid.
- Ben Lerner
I wasn't aware I'd write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however fli… - Ben Lerner
I wasn't aware I'd write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however fli…
Every relationship can feel saturated by market logic or at best purchased at the price of the immiseration of others. - Ben Lerner
Every relationship can feel saturated by market logic or at best purchased at the price of the immiseration of others.
I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the text… - Ben Lerner
I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the text…
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… - Ben Lerner
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…
What interests me about fiction is, in part, its flickering edge between realism and where a tear in the fabric of a story lets in some other sort of… - Ben Lerner
What interests me about fiction is, in part, its flickering edge between realism and where a tear in the fabric of a story lets in some other sort of…
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 tot… - 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 tot…
Shaving is a way to start the workday by ritually not cutting your throat when you've the chance. - Ben Lerner
Shaving is a way to start the workday by ritually not cutting your throat when you've the chance.
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 distr… - Ben Lerner
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 distr…
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