A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens, some of Zola, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and, in modern drama, Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'
Tony KushnerRead
You have a strange relationship with calamity when you're a writer: you write about it; as an artist, you objectify and fetishize it. You render life into material, and that's a creepy thing to do.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writers often transform personal and communal struggles into art, which can be unsettling.
In this quote, Tony Kushner reflects on the complex relationship between writers and the subjects of calamity they encounter. He suggests that as artists, writers take traumatic experiences and turn them into objects of artistic expression, which raises ethical questions about the process of commodifying suffering and the emotional distance it creates.
Themes
WritingCalamityArtObjectificationCreativitySuffering
In practice
Example use cases
During a literary festival, discussing how personal trauma informs writing.
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