Midweek Mental Mirth

"What is it that frightens us about a "novel of causes," and conversely, does fiction have to exist in some suspended, apolitical landscape in order to be literary? Can it not be politically and temporally specific and still be in good literary taste? We are leery of literature that smacks of the polemic, instructional, or prescriptive, and I guess rightly so—it's a drag to be lectured to—but what does that imply about our attitudes toward intellectual inquiry? While I enjoy reading kitchen-table novels in which characters are distilled to their emotional essence and their lives stripped of politics and commerce, it simply is not reflective of my experience. I see our lives as being a part of an enormous web of interconnected spheres, where the workings of the larger social, political, and corporate machinery impact something as private and intimate as the descent of an egg through a woman's fallopian tube. This is the resonance I want to conjure in my books."

--Ruth L. Ozeki, authour of My Year of Meats [WHICH SHOULD BE READ BY ALL. GOOD. VERY GOOD].

{Agree x 1000}.


P.S. I went 3/4 ways across the country last weekend, namely, Toronto. I may blog about it. 
Later, scalliwags!