I’m excited to read Alexander Chee’s description of his writing career because I admire the way he’s created a platform via his non-fiction. This first section of the book is called 'Early Days.' Kiese Laymon’s piece is written with a short story’s flow and interpersonal conflict (between a writer and an editor). as none of the contributors has quite the nerve to state baldly, in order to support themselves, they train others to do the work that isn’t providing them with a viable living.
If their authors set out to write about money, they end up spinning their wheels on the more formulaic and far less interesting subjects of self-discovery, dream-following, and 'career'. But if the mission statement of this anthology is to demystify 'how, exactly, literature and the people who make it are valued,' many of the pieces here seem to deflect away from transparency as if repelled by a magnetic field.
Like most anthologies, Scratch is uneven not every contributor is equally talented and none is able to drill very deeply into the relationship between work and money in writers’ lives. ('We’re only hurting ourselves as writers by being so secretive about money,' she told Martin.) Another is Roxane Gay. Strayed is among the few prospering contributors to this collection of essays and interviews who speaks so explicitly. as Scratch repeatedly demonstrates, the nitty-gritty on this stuff is in short supply in the wider writerly imagination, while fantasy, evasion, and envious brooding runneth over.
0 kommentar(er)
