Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene. The art of storytelling, along with cave painting, is the oldest of the arts and so a new young storyteller is entering a medium that's been going on for this intimidating number of generations and millennia before he or she got there. Well, it's not important to know what all your predecessors have done but there are some of us, those of us who started late and are still trying to get our symbols aligned, who may feel a little impulse in that direction. You want to know what the inventory of effects is. You know, what did all the guys and the girls say before you came on? What's been done already? What can you learn from this one and that one and so forth? But you can't learn it all. That's the great liberating truth. So you just pick up hints and cues where you can.
—John Barth
—John Barth
Sunday, July 29, 2012
