some mornings... I sit at the kitchen table shaking salt into the hairs on my arm, and a feeling shoves up in me: it's finished. Everything went past without me.
Jennifer EganRead
I think a playful critique is good for all of us, and that's basically how I see satire functioning. But I'm not interested in a kind of contemptuous satirical vision; I try always, even when I'm knowingly being satirical, to also be humane, but I mean, let's face it: there's plenty in American life to make fun of, and we all participate in it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Satire can be a constructive way to critique society, but it should be done with humanity and a playful spirit.
In this quote, Jennifer Egan emphasizes the importance of a playful and humane approach to satire. Instead of indulging in contempt, she advocates for a critique of American life that acknowledges its absurdities while remaining compassionate. This perspective invites a more thoughtful and engaging discourse, allowing for humor to coexist with empathy in our observations of society.
Themes
SatireHumorCritiqueHumanitySociety
In practice
Example use cases
Use this quote in a speech about the role of humor in social commentary at a comedy festival.
More from Jennifer Egan
All quotes →I think there are ways in which we censor ourselves; that's the most dangerous kind of censorship - that's how hegemony works.
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I find myself thinking more about the past as I get older... maybe because there's just more of it to think about. At the same time, I'm less haunted by it than I was as a younger person. I guess that's probably the ideal: to reach a point where you have access to all of your memories, but you don't feel victimized by them.
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I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and the music scene that we were part of. So, in a certain way, music cuts through time like almost nothing else. You know, it makes us feel like we're back in an earlier moment.
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And Alex understood that Scotty Hausmann did not exist. He was a word casing in human form: a shell whose essence has vanished.
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We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.
Jennifer EganRead
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