I took comfort, as a kid, in knowing that things had always been as awful and as wonderful as they were now, that the world was always on the edge of total destruction.
Michael ChabonRead
Rueful, bittersweet, funny, written with tenderness and bite, Merrill Feitell's stories, like so many classic short stories, are made from the plain and painful stuff of this world, and haunted by the possibility, and the impossibility, of a better one.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on how stories combine pain and humor to explore the complexities of life.
Michael Chabon emphasizes the profound nature of storytelling through Merrill Feitell's work, illustrating how classic short stories encapsulate the bittersweet essence of human experience. They are crafted from the raw and often painful realities of existence while simultaneously hinting at the yearning for a brighter future, blending the sorrowful and the humorous to convey deep truths about life.
Themes
StoriesLifePainHumorHopeExperience
In practice
Example use cases
Referencing this quote during a literature class to discuss the depth of short stories.
More from Michael Chabon
All quotes →A story begins with this nebulous feeling that’s hard to get a hold of and you’re testing your feelings and assumptions, testing what you believe. They end up turning into keepsakes and mementos –like amber in which a memory gets trapped.
Michael ChabonRead
I smoked and looked down at the bottom of Pittsburgh for a little while, watching the kids playing tiny baseball, the distant figures of dogs snatching at a little passing car, a miniature housewife on her back porch shaking out a snippet of red rug, and I made a sudden, frightened vow never to become that small, and to devote myself to getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Michael ChabonRead
It's always thrilling to encounter the sweep of time in a work of fiction in a way that feels authentic and real.
Michael ChabonRead
[My dad] didn't do much apart from the traditional winning of bread. He didn't take me to get my hair cut or my teeth cleaned; he didn't make the appointments. He didn't shop for my clothes. He didn't make my breakfast, lunch, or dinner. My mom did all of those things, and nobody ever told her when she did them that it made her a good mother.
Michael ChabonRead
You need three things to become a successful novelist: talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.
Michael ChabonRead
Similar quotes
Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.
Paul De ManRead
If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.
M. H. AbramsRead
There is something I keep wanting to say about reading short stories. I am doing it now, because I many never have another occasion. Stories are not chapters of novels. They should not be read one after another, as if they were meant to follow along. Read one. Shut the book. Read something else. Come back later. Stories can wait.
Mavis GallantRead
Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.
Cesare PaveseRead
We tend to regard history as true and 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' as untrue. That's always puzzled me.
Tim O'BrienRead
Novelists go about the strenuous business of marrying and burying their people, or else they send them to sea, or to Africa, or at the least, out of town. Essayists in their stillness ponder love and death.
Cynthia OzickRead