Sunday, June 5, 2011

Meeting writers

A strange feeling comes to me when I'm introduced to authors whose writing I love. I know one aspect of their mind so well already. I've spent hours reading their work, with their words filling my head, carrying me along the drift of a narrative. I surrender myself when I read, give myself over.

But the book is a collection of artfully arranged thoughts, trapped in the formaldehyde of print. A specimen I later examine. The writer is a person, responsive, secret. Some switch is flipped. It's at once a reduction and an intensification of intimacy, and I become awkward.

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