[Host at 16:50] “So… curious: You used the phrase "civic obligation.” Your writing was an act of patriotism?”
[Bennett] “I would call it so. It’s excruciating for us to have such superficial relationship all the time to such heavy duty news. And to take each other seriously as human beings we really have to think our way into other points of view. And if all I do or say is what it’s like to be me, I’m not thinking my way into another point of view.”
[Host] “Is that the critical role of the artist and novelist today? Should it be?”
Story in the Public Square 0107 Eric Bennett, The Pell Center, Mar 1, 2017, YouTube, 507 views
Bennett is interviewed here about his 2015 A Big Enough Lie: A Novel which is inspired by two historical events April 15, 2003 and two weeks later May 1st: James Frey’s memoir A Million Little Pieces publication, then George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished,” and different public responses to these two fictions. For Frey, the later outing of his autobiographical fabrication led to public shaming; not so for the president and his false war narratives.
The hosts also touch on Bennett’s scholarly 2015 Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing during the Cold War—a current read which led this diversion into Bennett’s other work.
So…curious: What would he say about civic obligation in the fields of public letters these first two months (one blizzard, one balm in the heartland) of election year 2024…
Natal Mercury conjunct USA North Node (orb 0° 18′)
Natal Mercury square natal “fabulist” Neptune (orb 6° 00′)
Images: Today 75° F