Writing seeks the ‘there’ of a place rather than its events

Evidence

You know too little and it doesn’t exist. You know too much and it doesn’t exist. Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows. That is what writing is about. Not what happens there, not what actions are played out there, but the there itself. There, that is writing’s location and aim. But how to get there? — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1088

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Knausgaard’s own conception of what writing’s true object is — the setting (‘the there’) rather than narrated events.
• SEED: Could seed an essay on place-centered memoir technique versus event-driven narrative.
• XREF: connects to: A writer may revisit a place because she cannot quite believe it exists. — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 193; Writers can appropriate eccentric historical artifacts for their creative work — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 23; Cities and stories both run on contested frontiers of meaning. (+1 more)

Related

• A writer may revisit a place because she cannot quite believe it exists. (similarity 0.83)
• Cities and stories both run on contested frontiers of meaning. (similarity 0.81)
• Imagination grants access to a place the writer has never visited (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• A writer may revisit a place because she cannot quite believe it exists. #expands (0.80) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 193
• Writers can appropriate eccentric historical artifacts for their creative work #exemplifies (0.60) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 23