Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Space Otherwise Reserved

David Guterson's The OtherIf I extrapolate from myself, there's a lot of deceit in the world without a beginning, middle, or end. The way it really works, a lot of the time, is that you suffer from the weight of what happened, from what you said and did, so you lie as therapy. Now the story you make up starts to take up space otherwise reserved for reality. For phenomena you substitute epiphenomena. Skew becomes ascendant. The secondary becomes primary. When it's time to confess, you don't know what you're saying.

-- David Guterson (4 May 1956-), American novelist, short story writer, poet, in "The Other" (2008)

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