Empathy is a human trait. But lots of humans exercise some traits more energetically than others. By "the usefulness of empathy" I mean the way in which a progressive might claim that empathy is a crucial aspect of any benign political system, and the way a conservative might argue that not only is it not necessary, but it might not even be all that helpful, in that regard.
Jim ShepardI have written screenplays. Most recently for Errol Morris, who was thinking about doing his first fiction movie, and with a young director who wanted to adopt Project X. Errol was a hoot. I loved talking with him. We were a good match, too, because we both kept joking that we'd found the only other person on earth more ambivalent than we were about the project.
Jim ShepardThe protagonist of Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours doesnโt make it easy for us, channeling as he does Barry Hannah and Denis Johnson by way of Rick Bass and Dennis Hopper, and self-presenting as yet another damaged romantic who thinks itโs always time to play the cowboy, skating in and out of sense. He canโt see right, and heโs haunted by nearly everything. Heโs trying to open up or shut himself down or at least get a hold of himself. Heโs trying to make do with what heโs done, while he reminds us that weโre all, one way or another, in that position.
Jim ShepardI channel the rote and the new and unseen. My head has always been the busiest of crossroads, a festival of happy and unhappy arrivals. In the hours before daybreak when I was a boy, god sent me words as visitors.
Jim ShepardI think fiction is all about the exercise of the empathetic imagination. Part of what I do is let the stuff I read about meld with what I have experienced.
Jim ShepardChristy has not been given a fair shake. She has not been identified as a competent premier.
Jim ShepardI don't beat at the details, but I do always keep in mind that anything that isn't A) moving the story forward or B) enlarging my understanding of the central characters has to be sacrificed. I have huge folders of details - research - with a story like Netherlands. Only a very small part of it gets used. The old iceberg analogy again.
Jim Shepard