I don’t know a whole lot about non-fiction journalism, but the way i think about [it] in terms of what I can do is: I think of it as a service industry. Essays like this are occasions to watch somebody reasonably bright but also reasonably average pay far closer attention and think at far more length about all sorts of different stuff than most of us have a chance to in our daily lifes…—David Foster Wallace
If you haven’t read David Foster Wallace’s CONSIDER THE LOBSTER, you might want to take a look. Meg and I read it a few months ago and liked it a lot. (I’ve yet to read his fiction, myself.) I took this quote from his great interview with Michael Silverblatt (I know MS’s voice is hard to take, but he’s a smart reader and he talks to some great folks.)
* * *
The interviewer asked, “How does your wife take the way she’s depicted in your comics?” and James Kochalka replied, “She used to hate that I would draw about her at all, especially if I drew something that was dirty. But, she’s getting more used to it.”
I haven’t written a story about Meg yet, (I’ve drawn her a bunch) but it’s bound to come up.
Legend has it that Etgar Keret’s girlfriend was always bugging him to write a story about her, so he wrote the excellent story “Fatso.”
That’s what you get for asking, I guess.