Mediated images of the world produce a felt smallness that spurs and frustrates writing.
Evidence
The whole of the physical world has been elevated to this sphere, everything has been incorporated into the immense imaginary realm from South American rain forests and the islands of the Pacific Ocean to the North African deserts and Eastern Europe’s tired, grey towns. Our minds are flooded with images of places we have never been, yet still know, people we have never met, yet still know and in accordance with which we, to a considerable extent, live our lives. The feeling this gives, that the world is small, tightly enclosed around itself, without openings to anywhere else, is almost incestuous, and although I knew this to be deeply untrue, since actually we know nothing about anything, still I could not escape it. The longing I always felt, which some days was so great it could hardly be controlled, had its source here. It was partly to relieve this feeling that I wrote, I wanted to open the world by writing, for myself; at the same time this is also what made me fail. — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1204
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the book’s established theme of writing as an attempt to ‘open the world’ and its failure. — connects to: Eccentric camerawork can shift attention to marginal details — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 385; Writers must intentionally shock their psyches to generate charged prose.; The idealized images in catalogues contrasted sharply with real life. — Crews, Harry, A childhood the biography of a place, 301 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- The idealized images in catalogues contrasted sharply with real life.
#exemplifies(0.60) — Crews, Harry, A childhood the biography of a place, 301 - Frustration and defensiveness hinder transition to general audience writing.
#expands(0.55) — Tilar J Mazzeo, How to Write a Bestseller, 31 - Eccentric camerawork can shift attention to marginal details
#complicates(0.40) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 385 - Writers must intentionally shock their psyches to generate charged prose.
#complicates(0.35)