Great little story about an event at the PEN World Voices Festival, which has just finished in New York.
In a discussion between Paul Auster and Enrique Vila-Matas, the conversation focusses on readers being judged in the same way that authors are:
"Then it was time for questions, and a woman's voice piped up from the front: "Don't you think you were a little hard on the reader?" she said. "Isn't a reader smart just for opening a book?"
"That's what I said," Auster retorted.
"But don't they get what they get?" she said, and went on to say that readers shouldn't have to have any prejudices or expectations about what a book is; that reading should be like sex."
"I agree with you completely," he said, and went on again about the critics.
"You should relax; this is your wife interjecting!" she said, and a gasp went through he crowd. It seemed that, just as a character in one of Auster's books wanders into the life of the author, we had become caught in the middle of a minor domestic dispute! But Auster accepted her comments, as Vila-Mates looked on bemusedly."
The rest is here.
Showing posts with label PEN World Voices Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PEN World Voices Festival. Show all posts
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Me
- Mark
- I am writing a PhD at the University of Glasgow entitled "The Poetics of Time in Contemporary Literature". My writing has been published in Type Review, Dancehall, Puffin Review and TheState. I review books for Gutter and The List. I am also an editor and reviewer at the Glasgow Review of Books.