I really love this essay. I had a remarkable professor in grad school who said that his best friends were all dead but that he got to speak with them every day. Of course he was talking about writers, philosophers and - for him - theologians, that he was thinking about and in dialogue with. Your essay joins the conversation with Alain de Baton in his work on "cultural friends". He says, "the arts allow us to become soulmates of people who, despite having been born in 1630 or 1808, are our proper companions." Congrats on this piece, great literature deserves more of our attention than it gets these days.
Ah, thank you so much for these kind words, Emily. Your professor's idea reminds me of something important: Even when we are alone, we always have the choice as to who we want to spend our time with. And it is way better to hang out with Ray Carver than the people that suck me in on Twitter, Instagram, etc.
I really love this essay. I had a remarkable professor in grad school who said that his best friends were all dead but that he got to speak with them every day. Of course he was talking about writers, philosophers and - for him - theologians, that he was thinking about and in dialogue with. Your essay joins the conversation with Alain de Baton in his work on "cultural friends". He says, "the arts allow us to become soulmates of people who, despite having been born in 1630 or 1808, are our proper companions." Congrats on this piece, great literature deserves more of our attention than it gets these days.
Ah, thank you so much for these kind words, Emily. Your professor's idea reminds me of something important: Even when we are alone, we always have the choice as to who we want to spend our time with. And it is way better to hang out with Ray Carver than the people that suck me in on Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Going to do my best to be more conscious of this.
Raymond Carver is an incredible writer. Good breakdown of a couple of his stories.