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What do writers do when they seriously notice the world? Perhaps they do nothing less than rescue the life of things from their death--from two deaths, one small and one large: from the 'death' which literary form always threatens to impose on life, and from actual death. Which is to say, they resc…

[...] fiction's chief difference from poetry and painting and sculpture--from the other arts of noticing--is this internal psychological element. In fiction, we get to examine the self in all its performance and pretence, its fear and secret ambition, its pride and sadness. It is by noticing people…

[...] For details represent those moments in a story where form is outlived, cancelled, evaded. I think of details as nothing less than bits of life sticking out of the frieze of form, imploring us to touch them. Details are not, of course, just bits of life: they represent that magical fusion, w…

n+1 inveighed against so-called 'World Literature'