joy williams (other things; quotes, blurbs, she drives a bronco, etc.)

most of these quotes i found from newspaper or magazine articles

i used LexisNexis, which i get for free at work

In serious fiction, one must remain aloof, playful, ironic; one mustn't really care. In the genre of the crime novel, the writer just has fun and makes money.

funny; but why must one remain aloof, playful, and ironic? because, i guess (i am guessing right now), in fiction you are god (you just are; you create everything and have no restrictions) and joy williams believes that in real life god is aloof, playful, and ironic; and so in fiction, then, because one is god, one--in order to be analogous (in the SAT way) in one's relation to one's fiction as in god's relation to his fiction, which is our real life--must be aloof, playful, and ironic

All art is about nothingness: our apprehension of it, our fear of it, its approach... [from Best American Short Stories, 1995; talking about her own story, Honored Guest.]

here she is being a little... pretentious, or something, i think

because she is defining the word 'art' and the word 'nothinginness' in the same sentence, and if you do that, then you can say anything

one could just as easily say that all art is about candy: our fear of it, its approach...

though i guess i know what she means, that if you keep asking questions, you will find that all art--everything, maybe--is about death

for example, if you ask someone why they drew a picture, and they say 'to impress my friend,' and you ask, 'why do you want to do that,' and they say, 'to get them to like me,' and you ask 'why do you want that'

then finally, if they keep answering you, they will be forced to say something like, 'because i'm going to die one day; so, because of relativity, then, everything before death has a sort of value; because of death, there is the opposite of death, which is life'

reality

I believe you can only perceive reality, as such, very briefly. Otherwise it is very frightening for us.

so that explains it; i just need to stop perceiving reality (i am not being sarcastic right now, but making a sort of point, that perceiving reality, reading literary fiction, actually, objectively, does not do anything 'good' for yourself; five-year olds don't read literary fiction, and are happy; and meanwhile everyone dies, anyway--and i am not being immature; this 'problem,' of whether or not it is 'better' to distract oneself or immerse oneself, in regards to literature, and keeping in mind that we will die, has never been explored as far as i know)

self-promotion

If you do believe that our perceptions of life are very limited, for the sake of our self-preservation, the short story form allows you to dwell on those instances.

read her short stories if you can't handle her novels, she says

dialogue

joy williams being funny:

"I used to be terrified of dialogue," Ms. Williams said in a recent telephone interview from a house she owns in Sarasota, Fla. "I was shy. I felt I didn't know people. Then, at some point, I realized you could make your characters say the most wonderful things."

short stories

being funny again:

"A window opens for a moment," Ms. Williams said of her characters, "and they are able to see and say things that they couldn't before. Then the window shuts again."

joy williams on other people's books

"A great American road-trip novel—improbable, scary, and transcendent." (On Winslow in Love, by Kevin Canty, her former student.)

"Reality is not the perception of humankind alone but of all creatures. The White Bone is a brilliant precursor of the novel of the future--a realization of the novel of noble and tragic lives not our own. This sorrowful novel does holy work because it engages us in the holiest of acts--empathy." (On The White Bone, by Barbara Gowdy, a bestseller in Canada.)

[and compare that to Alice Munro's blurb for the same book: "Inspired imagination and research have created a marvel of a book. In The White Bone, the language social structure, intellectual and spiritual world of elephants are as real as the fabric of human life. Absolutely compelling."

for Munro, Gowdy has done a good job convincing her that elephants perceive and feel just like humans.

for Williams, Gowdy has done a good job because of accepting it as a truth that elephants perceive and feel just like humans.

also, in Munro, there is a kind of meaninglessness to what she is talking about; exemplified by the cliche: "...fabric of human life." The bedsheet of human life... yeah, that's... accurate, thoughtful, insightful, original, etc.]

"Cool, clean, and devastating all-American realism." (On A Stranger in This World, by Kevin Canty, her former student.)

"This is a swift, smart, sharply self-aware account of a woman who loves love." (On Making Love, A Romance, non-fiction by Lucretia Stewart.)

"Part tract, part travelogue, Lynas's smart, hip, and factual book wakes us up and guides us to action. High Tide is a lively, instructive primer for awareness and change." (On High Tide, The Truth About Our Climate Crisis, non-fiction by Mark Lynas.)

joy williams drives a bronco...

should i defend joy williams?

is she a hypocrite?

what does this mean, that she drives a bronco, yet writes a non-fiction book attacking people for destroying the environment and being oblivious and inconsiderate?

it means that joy williams, on a scale of 1-100 of saving the world is probably a 70 or something

100 would be balancing it out perfectly so that the amount of 'world' that you save is exactly the maximum amount that one person can accomplish theoritically (this is really complex; for example, you can kill yourself and not cause any harm, but also not save any world; or you can kill yourself and ten people (terrorism) and possibly prevent eleven people from causing harm; or you can write books to change people's thinking so that they will cause less harm to the world, and while writing those books drive a bronco to keep yourself happy so that you can think better and write more books to save more world; and then there's the question of what is good, what 'save' means, what 'world' means: is life good, or bad; if good then someone needs to find out if the universe will stop expanding and return to a big-bang state, and then find out how to stop that; if good, then stopping the universe from contracting would be 'saving the world')

it's just too complex to say anything about

and especially to say anything about in an interview, where you don't get any time to think, which is what happened to joy williams here; i copied and pasted the entire article from LexisNexis:

February 18, 2001 Sunday
Correction Appended
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section 6; Column 1; Magazine Desk; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 613 words

HEADLINE: The Way We Live Now: 2-18-01: Questions for Joy Williams; Up a Tree

BYLINE: By David Rakoff

BODY:

Q: Tell me about your book of essays, "Ill Nature." It has a certain scorched-earth tone.

Well, why not? It's a very environmentally focused book. I'm sure readers will be indignant. They'll throw the book across the room. I hope the book will jolt people simply through the aggression of the language to view afresh their own attitudes toward the way they live and treat animals and the environment.

How specifically would you want Americans to re-view the way they live?

I know this all sounds incredibly naive -- just for them to think about their actions.

If we all just wondered what on earth we're doing here, the thought, if we could face it, would transform our life immensely. I'm really quite the pessimist, though. I don't have any great hope that this will happen.

Must environmentalists cop to the contradictions in their own lives, come clean?

That's preposterous -- nothing could ever be written. I drive a Bronco. It's an old, large car, and I love my Bronco. I drive all across the country in it. And so I can be immediately assailed on this front. A lot of people who are trying to help and do things and live in certain ways get bogged down in this immediate attack upon certain aspects of their lifestyle. It's easy to attack any environmentalist. One should attempt to have as much integrity as one can in a very difficult, technological, complex time.

So how do you change people's minds?

I'm not interested at all in the mild and polite, or having to be so courteous and responsible. It's not as though I'm up for a cabinet post or anything.

Speaking of cabinet positions and the environment, what do you think about Ralph Nader's contention that the environmental policies of the new administration will be so horrible that they will merely galvanize people to action?

Oh, Nader! I won't speak to people in Florida who voted for Nader ever again. I think that's totally preposterous. I can't imagine someone actually swallowing that line. He did a great disservice. It's going to be worse thanour worst nightmare.

So then where do you go in terms of Hippocratically doing the least harm?

This is what all my friends say in Key West: "But where will you go?" That sort of resignation is truly horrible and unacceptable. That's fine for the They -- you know, the They who feel that since you really can't change anything, why do anything? I mean, just try to do the small things.

But who are the They? I eat meat. I'm wearing a leather belt, I live in a toxic American city. I am alive only because of drugs that were developed through animal research. I'm thrilled they killed all those animals for my benefit. I am the They.

That's a false moral equivalent. It's like that famous National Lampoon cover that showed a dog with a revolver pointed at its head: "Buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog."

If our presence in nature is by definition denuding and corrupting, wouldn't it follow that the truly moral alternative would be to live in New York City?

Oh, definitely. Wouldn't that be wonderful, if there were just these gorgeous cities, and then everything else was a preserve? I don't have to see a place. The thought that it exists and that extraordinary animals can live and sustain themselves in an extraordinary landscape that could be destroyed just because of an administration that's going to be out in four years is so upsetting. That's why I'm so annoyed at Nader and the people he influenced and snowed. And we seem to be powerless before it. It's going to be a very bad time. No, it's just nice to think about the gorgeous city on a hill.

But then what do we eat?

Well, eating is so overrated. Here, have a mint, they're delicious. -- David Rakoff