An excerpt of Christine Pountney's Sweet Jesus over at Ryeberg. It's one of the parts that most fascinated me, about melancholic clowns.
Is writing a genetic trait? Or is it, as Michelle Dean proposes, just easier to be a confident artist, like, say, Lena Dunham, if you've been raised among people who earn their keep through their creative pursuits?
Is Cheryl Strayed an Elizabeth Gilbert for those of us with a little extra motherfuckeritude? Or does her so-called radical empathy actually signify, as Colin Dickey suggests, a turn away from pat self-help cliches toward the rich complexities—the very unresolvability, of life? Either way, here's to much more Sugar, where she so frequently hits that signature mix “of awareness and humility.”
Bob Dylan's odds of taking home a 2012 Nobel: 10/1. Alice Munro: 8/1. E. L. James: 500/1.
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Photo by TEDx ConcordiaU Portland Planning Team
