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When an artist dies young there is always talk of the paintings unpainted, the books unwritten, which points to some imaginary storehouse of undone things and not to the imagination itself, the far richer treasure, lost. All of those works are the trail left behind, a path across time, left like th…

Why am I telling this story? I am, as I've said, a minor character, out of place in this narrative, but the major characters of all these stories from the first ten years of the epidemic have left. The men I wanted to follow into the future are dead. Finding them had made me want to live, and I did…

Narrative writing sets down details in an order that evokes the writer's experience for the reader, she announced. This seemed obvious but also radical - no one had ever said it so plainly to us. She spoke often of "the job." If you're doing your job, the reader feels what you felt. You don't have …

And this, of course, is why you should never read for yourself. You can't give yourself the impersonal reading you need. [...] to succeed, it requires an ability to be coldly impersonal about yourself and your state, so as not to cloud what is there with what you want to see. I think few of us know…

And this, of course, is why you should never read for yourself. You can't give yourself the impersonal reading you need. [...] to succeed, it requires an ability to be coldly impersonal about yourself and your state, so as not to cloud what is there with what you want to see. I think few of us know…