I loved this interview! I love so much of Shane’s criticism and am hoping to read An Honest Woman soon—this was such a great conversation and so lovely to read about her writing process, the arc of her career, and how she thinks about disclosure, publicity and ambition.
Her note on the ethics of personal narrative/memoir was particularly useful and insightful: “Probably everyone mentioned in the book can easily recognize themselves and some other parties. Those readers must feel (correctly!) that their portrayals are incomplete…The difficulty these questions point to—discrepancy in experience, discrepancy in comfort with disclosure–can’t be eliminated in life or in art. That's no excuse for carelessness, but I think recognition of that much should be the starting point for all personal writing.”
I loved this interview! I love so much of Shane’s criticism and am hoping to read An Honest Woman soon—this was such a great conversation and so lovely to read about her writing process, the arc of her career, and how she thinks about disclosure, publicity and ambition.
Her note on the ethics of personal narrative/memoir was particularly useful and insightful: “Probably everyone mentioned in the book can easily recognize themselves and some other parties. Those readers must feel (correctly!) that their portrayals are incomplete…The difficulty these questions point to—discrepancy in experience, discrepancy in comfort with disclosure–can’t be eliminated in life or in art. That's no excuse for carelessness, but I think recognition of that much should be the starting point for all personal writing.”