Thinking Quotes by John D'Agata

John D'Agata

Back in the day, a lot of our instructors in nonfiction were actually fiction scholars. So they would bring in stories as models for the essay. And in some ways that’s a good idea, because we can all learn from other genres. But I think it also made me realize that I literally didn’t have an essay model, and that if I wanted one I would have to find it.

Fiction

Ideas

Thinking

John D'Agata

I think that in a lot of readers’ minds the essay is a lot more utilitarian than it is art.

Art

Mind

Thinking

John D'Agata

I’m not a poet, but I was in the poetry program. And I’m also not much of a nonfiction writer, at least not in the standard sense of nonfiction, nor especially in the way we were thinking about nonfiction back then, in the late 90s.

Nonfiction

Thinking

Way

John D'Agata

I’m not worried about what part of their life they needed to massage in order to achieve something that I get to experience as transcendent. Because that’s the point of literature, I think: to connect.

Literature

Order

Thinking

John D'Agata

Yet there are some critics in the nonfiction world who still look at some of today’s stranger interpretations of the essay and say “You don’t belong here. That’s not how we do things.” I think that’s problematic.

Thinking

Today

World

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Art

Artist

Beautiful

Book

Borders

Community

Country

Ends

Environment

Essays

Facts

Fate

Feels

Fiction

Figures

Forever

Form

Frustration

Fun

Funky

Grad

Helping

Home

Ideas

Intimate

Kind

Known

Library

Literature

Mainstream

May

Mind

Movement

Needs

Nonfiction

Obsession

Order

Pain

Peers

People

Persons

Perspective

Philosophical

Powerful

Program

Risk

Rome

School

Should Have

Sometimes

Stranger

Students

Talking

Thinking

Today

Trying

Want

Wanted

Way

World

Writing

Thinking Quotes by John D'Agata

I think that in a lot of readers’ minds the essay is a lot more utilitarian than it is art.

I’m not a poet, but I was in the poetry program. And I’m also not much of a nonfiction writer, at least not in the standard sense of nonfiction, nor especially in the way we were thinking about nonfiction back then, in the late 90s.

I’m not worried about what part of their life they needed to massage in order to achieve something that I get to experience as transcendent. Because that’s the point of literature, I think: to connect.

Yet there are some critics in the nonfiction world who still look at some of today’s stranger interpretations of the essay and say “You don’t belong here. That’s not how we do things.” I think that’s problematic.

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