well people often talk about the death
of literature I think people have been
speaking about it since shortly after
the first work of literature was ever
made but there's more and more talk
about it and it's been propelled
by diminishing readership by what feels
like an an increasing apathy or
even anxiety or
even um
mistrust of
literature and um the movement towards
screens you know everything being on a
screen and what will that mean for books
which don't aren't very well served on a
screen it's not that you can't read a
book on a screen perfectly well but you
can't read a book on a screen that also
has email and your calendar and texting
books can't compete with those kinds of
media so you know so we wonder what
people read books and and I think that
there are still things and there will
always be things that only only
literature can do only literature can
communicate I don't think that
literature is necessarily any better
whatever that means than film or dance
or music in fact I'm often
drawn personally more to film dance and
music than I am to literature but I know
that there are moments in my life when I
feel a need for literature and only for
literature so for
example um the mother of my oldest
friend passed away about a week ago and
I went down to visit her in Washington
DC I live in New York
and um I was quite worried about what to
say and how to fill what I thought might
be very awkward or even painful
silences
and I brought um poems about 20 poems
and I read them to her and we talked
about them and in that moment when we
together mostly just her of course but
together we confronting this
um you know the biggest moment of life
which is
death we relied on poetry and I think
that poems and stories and novels are
very
helpful um exactly when we most need
language in the the most sort of dire or
urgent or existential moments of
Life novels are meant to be right over
the course of many hours or many days
and uh um even a story takes half an
hour to read and I just wasn't sure in
this case you know what her her energy
level would be so I wanted something
that would be quite small but even
though that's that's the case it's also
true that poetry is the most condensed
form of literature and in certain ways
it's the most pure form um I
don't think that novels are any less
good than poetry but I think that novels
have a lot to learn from poetry and in
terms of what's possible how direct one
can be how concentrated language can be
and how evocative and resonant you know
sometimes I think novels make the
mistake of
being too much like their own
description you know if somebody says
well what is this book about um my dream
is to write a novel where somebody would
have to say I could tell you I suppose
but that would really miss the point you
just have to read it that to my mind is
a good novel a novel that
is its own synopsis just an expanded
version of it synopsis comes awfully
close to television actually um I think
that novels can still do something that
poetry does in terms of
being kind of ineffable or mysterious or
not quite graspable just on a much
larger scale all of my life I've been
more drawn to the visual arts than to
literature um and even still
when I'm
feeling um like I can't remember why I
wanted to be a writer I don't go to
books I actually go to paintings or
sculpture to me the distinctions have
been drawn too sharply you know the
difference
between uh
musician a writer an artist a
dancer we've we've categorized them um
segregated them so that there's very
very little overlap but in fact they're
all just people who want to make things
that you could say have no use you know
everything in life has a use that the
person who made the camera that this is
being shot with made it so that it could
record something like this and
television or a computer that someone's
watching it on was made with specific
functions in mind a bridge is made so
that people can get from one land mass
to another but novels and paintings and
songs really they might have effects in
the world World they might be political
they might be
entertaining they might be objects of
Commerce but they're not really made for
any of those reasons they're just made
for their own sake and I think that
anyone who makes something for its own
sake whether you try to have it
published or whether you're just you
know rearranging Twigs on the ground
because it pleases
you people who do that are artists
and um you know because we live in a
world in which you have to have a job
and in which it's a expected that you
will grow within your
job and because we like to have an
answer to the question what is it that
you do you know you meet someone at a
party or they say well what do you do it
makes us uncomfortable not to have an
answer but the truth
is you know the different art art forms
are are much much more similar than they
are
different when I'm not working on a book
I am somebody who just kind of moves
through the world and sees nice things
and tries to remember them but usually
doesn't and hears jokes and tries to
remember them but usually doesn't and
um and so on and has ideas that
disappear but when I'm writing I save
those things so that I can use them you
know rearrange them nothing comes from
nothing um I think there's an impression
that books or art um making art is a
much more romantically creative act than
it is as if inspir ation strikes and
suddenly something appears but it's not
really that hasn't been my experience at
all it's much more about being attentive
to what's around and starting to get to
know what you like and what you find
useful and then collecting those things
instead of everything collecting those
things and then figuring out what the
most pleasing arrangement of them is for
you um there's nothing objective about
it it's not the case that you know
someone else will necessarily like it
but um
it it really does feel like making
collage just with you know the whole
world as your
um cupboard of of things to to
arrange certainly in in art I think most
important things happen on the
subconscious level when I approach a
writing project I don't think about it
like that um in fact and I say this not
as a joke or or to sort of disparage
myself but I really don't think about
much at all it's very I'm just very open
you know to what do I feel like working
on what's interesting to me right now
what am I curious about um but I never
think about you know what the potential
use of something would be like I was
saying before there's a quality of art
that is useless in the very very best
way I mean that is like the highest
compliment I could pay and if I started
thinking about what I would achieve for
myself psychologically or you know in
search of meaning or catharsis that's
just another kind of use just just in in
in almost the same way that trying to
make something that you could sell for
money is a kind of use it's not to say
that those two things might you know
wouldn't be good in your life but I
don't think that they make make a good
work of art they're not a good starting
point Don Dilo once said nobody writes
his first book it just happens at a
certain point you find the printer is
you know all these pages are coming out
and you think oh my God I can't believe
I did this um I believe that I mean
maybe it's a little different if you
start late in life having been you know
sort of um incubating up an idea for a
long time but most people when they
write their first book it at a certain
point they realize they have a book on
their hands and the second book is is
different because then you have
something that you're responding to you
have your own expectations if you
published your first book you have the
world's expectations so I found the
second book somewhat more difficult
because of that but I had started the
second book before before my first book
was published so in a way I was able to
escape some of those traps but then
after having written two novels I wrote
a work of non-fiction about um eating
animals about animal farming and I think
it's not a coincidence that I decided to
move in a different direction because I
was starting to feel the weight
of momentum you know I didn't want to do
a third thing because I've done two
previous things I didn't want to to make
a choice about tomorrow just because of
what I did
yesterday so maybe even to a fault I
resisted that
um and and decided to move off and and
try something else I think there are a
lot of ways of talking about choices in
in art um and it's a mistake to think
that the way we talk about it
retrospectively as critics
um which is very useful and interesting
but it's a mistake to think that that's
the same language of creation um
somebody once said I can't remember who
maybe it was Oscar wild I can't remember
said there are only two kinds of objects
in the world those that charm us and
those that don't charm us and um you
know something can be Charming in the
most completely simple way and for
whatever reason it speaks to us we like
it it is for us um and something that
isn't Charming is mundane and it's not
that we hate it it's just that it has no
great effect on us and each person of
course has his own or her own sense of
what is charming
and you know in in a way writing just
boils down to asking that question again
and again like does this charm me or not
um something Charming can mean that it's
very painful it doesn't mean that it's
happy and and beautiful it can mean that
it's very ugly it can mean that it is um
funny it can mean that it's serious it
can be tragic it can be comic I think
Charming really just means in in a
certain way that that it's it's
authentic and exceptional to you I mean
PE people often ask me why do I write
about family so often I find that such a
weird question I don't even know how to
answer it because the answer feels so
obvious to me um you know nobody asks JK
Rowling why she writes about Wizards so
much that to me is weird that's a weird
Choice she made that requires some
explanation because nobody knows Wizards
nobody interacts with Wizards nobody
can't fall asleep at night because of
their relationship to wizards but
everyone has a family even people whose
families are absent
maybe even especially people whose
families are absent you know these are
the main themes of life and they've been
the main themes of literature since
Genesis um so I assume I will always
write about family um family is also
especially important to me um but you
know whether it will take the form of
Fathers and Sons in loss or whether it
will take the form of a married couple
in a comedy that I don't
know e