You read a story about a guy standing in line at a coffee cart. Platitudes are platitudes, and they’re fine, but saying I liked your reading was such a massive understatement as to be absurd. I had so much to say to you and ask you, and I think I said something banal like, “I really liked your reading,” which was true of course, of course it was true, but it wasn’t nearly what I wanted to convey. You came to read at Notre Dame, Ben Marcus, and I wanted to talk to you, but I was nervous and probably came across as a creeper. I was teaching then, no longer a student. In short, you were an inspiration, maybe the biggest and most influential to me as a student.Īnd then years later you came to read at Notre Dame. I thought you were a fearless writer, and back then, I was young and afraid, although I didn’t show it in workshop, I wanted to be liked, as we all do when we’re young and insecure, but you, you were brazen, your writing was full of effrontery, and that’s what I wanted most in my writing. They are audacious books, the syntax unlike anything I’d read before – call me a limited reader, of course, I’ve since read a lot more and come to understand its lineage – I wanted to emulate your style, your language, the way you created complex narrative by parataxis. I read Age of Wire & String and Notable American Women the summer before starting grad school. I have read your books, or several of them at least. I woke up early on a Sunday morning to finish reading.
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