Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘writing and love’

Essays |

We’re in love. It’s complicated.

Marriage is so last century. Natalie Bakopoulos contemplates the demise of the marriage plot and Jeffrey Eugenides’s complex, undermining revival of it in his aptly-titled novel, The Marriage Plot. Is love still the ultimate trump card? Dear reader, it is. With some qualifications.


Shop Talk |

"Atlas Shrugged" + "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" 4-Ever

Clearly there’s some connection between literature and romance. We know that fiction makes you more empathetic, and thus, possibly, more dateable. Writing and love are a lot alike. And a literary misalignment can even break a budding romance. Recently we’ve heard about how a shared love of books can act as a matchmaker. Now the San Francisco Public Library has taken that a step further, organizing a speed-dating session in the library itself: Participants were asked to bring a favorite book, so he clutched a copy of “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell and “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy. In […]


Shop Talk |

Dating Advice as Writing Advice

Over at The Elegant Variation, Marisa Silver guest blogs, drawing some parallels between love and writing: On love: 3. You will never know your partner. 4. You should never know your partner. 5. You will never know how things will end up. On writing: 3. People will ask you what your work means and you will try to explain it to them, but you won’t really be able to explain it even if it sounds like you are saying something intelligent. 4. You should not be able to explain it. There should always be something ineffable and mysterious about it, […]