The Nature of Desire: What David Mamet and the Dalai Lama Can Teach Us About Writing Fiction
by Kevin Haworth
With some help from his friends, Kevin Haworth explores the complicated and necessary role of desire in fiction.
Kevin Haworth is the author of the essay collection Famous Drownings in Literary History and the novel The Discontinuity of Small Things. With Dinty W. Moore, he edited Lit From Within: Contemporary Masters on the Art and Craft of Writing. He lives in hilly Southeast Ohio and writes a monthly essay on literature and culture for Michigan Quarterly Review.
With some help from his friends, Kevin Haworth explores the complicated and necessary role of desire in fiction.
People tell me that I am a poetic writer. My response to this characterization varies from Thanks! to What does that mean? to Yes, my novel did sell like poetry to I want people to love my work in the way that poetry lovers love poetry, desperately and a bit dangerously, gripping the pistol under the pillow with one hand and the childhood stuffed rabbit with the other. But what, really, does this cross-genre accusation imply? It’s meant as praise (I’m fairly certain), but wary praise, as if I’ve stumbled into a neighbor’s backyard party, where I’m welcome as long […]
