"The whole point of art, for me, is to give us tools to explore feelings or situations or dilemmas that defeat our other ways of making meaning. When a situation is so vertiginous, so ethically complex, so emotionally fraught, that I feel like I’m staring into an abyss—that’s when I feel moved to make art, when I feel I need the peculiar tools of fiction to figure out what I think. I mean, to inhabit my bewilderment. I think art is the realm in which we can give full rein to the ambiguity, uncertainty, and doubt that we often feel we have to suppress in other kinds of expression—in our political speech, say. I think an ability to dwell in ambiguity, uncertainty, and doubt is a central virtue of humanness. I think it’s crucial to any thinking that might adequately capture the complexity of reality."
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Novelists from the United StatesLiterary criticsPoets from the United StatesEducators from the United StatesGay poets
Original Language: English
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On how he defines art in “Promiscuity Is a Virtue: An Interview with Garth Greenwell” in The Paris Review (2020 Jan 14)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Garth_Greenwell
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Garth Greenwell
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