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
If having a story that's compelling - you want to know what will happen - is traditional, then ultimately I am a traditionalist. That is what readers care about. It's what I care about as a reader. Now if I can have that along with a strong girding of ideas and some kind of exciting technical forays - then that is just the jackpot.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A compelling story combines traditional narrative elements with innovative ideas and techniques.
Jennifer Egan emphasizes the importance of a captivating narrative in literature, suggesting that while readers appreciate traditional storytelling, they also value creative ideas and experimental techniques. She sees the ideal work as one that marries a gripping plot with thought-provoking concepts and inventive methods, creating a richer reading experience.
Themes
StorytellingNarrativeLiteratureCreativityInnovation
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, discussing the balance of traditional and modern elements in storytelling.
More from Jennifer Egan
All quotes βI think there are ways in which we censor ourselves; that's the most dangerous kind of censorship - that's how hegemony works.
Jennifer EganRead
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.
Jennifer EganRead
And Alex understood that Scotty Hausmann did not exist. He was a word casing in human form: a shell whose essence has vanished.
Jennifer EganRead
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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