I guess when I'm frightened or in pain or maybe very bored I've tried to hold myself together by imposing a narrative order on the experience as it happens.
Ben LernerI don't think "I'm going to publish this as fiction" but I think "I'm going to tell this story to a friend" and then I start telling the story in my mind as the experience transpires as a way of pretending it's already happened.
Ben LernerI’ll work my way from irony to sincerity in the sinking city, a would-be Whitman of the vulnerable grid.
Ben Lerner