Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?--and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.
Curtis SittenfeldWe all stood and gathered our backpacks and I looked at the floor around my chair to make sure I hadn’t dropped anything. I was terrified of unwittingly leaving behind a scrap of paper on which were written all my private desires and humiliations. The fact that no such scrap of paper existed, that I did not even keep a diary or write letters except bland, earnest, falsely cheerful ones to my family (We lost to St. Francis in soccer, but I think we’ll win our game this Saturday; we are working on self-portraits in art class, and the hardest part for me is the nose) never decreased my fear.
Curtis SittenfeldIt is not a camera, or a reporter that makes something real and genuine; more often a camera or a reporter does the opposite.
Curtis SittenfeldIs the depressing part that he's only half right - it's not that she doesn't need rescuing but that nobody else will be able to do it? She has always somehow known that she is the one who will have to rescue herself. Or maybe what's depressing is that this knowledge seems like it should make life easier, and instead it makes it harder.
Curtis Sittenfeld