Saturday 1 May 2010
Two Ways of Looking at Falseness: Part 3

Filed under Books

This (left) may or may not be Robert Atwan.

Regardless, here’s a quote from him, courtesy of Brevity’s Blog:

“The compound seems inescapable: a piece of writing may be aesthetically true, yet verifiably false; just as it can be—as is so much contemporary memoir—verifiably true but aesthetically false.”

Atwan series-edits Best American Essays. I love/hate the idea of a thing being a best American essay. But I tend to love Atwan. Here’s something else he once wrote, which I’ve told students for years: Essays are all about seeing a mind at work.

Atwan!

2010-05-01  ::  dave