“The Incendiaries” by R. O. Kwon: Author’s Addendum on Writing
“The people I know best continue to surprise me with the multiverses they contain”…In fiction, as much as I can, I hope to do justice to that complexity (1, p. 217)…
“More than anything, though, what helped was the day-to-day act of writing itself. Of getting to engage seriously, often desperately, with the English language. Words, words, words! I love the shape of words. I love the roll and crunch of syllables in my mouth. Most of the time writing’s so fucking hard. But in the rare, astonishing moments when the writing’s really going well, when I’m so deep in it that I forget I have an I, there’s nothing like it. (As Goethe said: ‘The songs made me, not I them’). It’s the purest joy I know” (1, p. 223).
Comment: She contains a “multiverse” in which, at times, when writing’s really going well, she joyfully forgets her own “I,” her own regular personality, and the novel seems to write itself.
Added same day: I then began reading the novel, but it was hard to follow, so I put it aside.
1. R. O. Kwon. The Incendiaries. New York, Riverhead Books, 2018.
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