"I thought if I could talk to editors, if I could talk to s, if I could show them the kinds of things you could do if you were making use of the page rather than just using words, then people would understand there has to be a way of approaching a book more like a film. With film, yes, you start out with a , but the director is given resources with which to realize that film. And everybody understands you can’t know from the beginning what that film is going to be in the end. You are not expected to submit an already completed film in order to get funding. But that is the way publishing works. It’s constrained by a specific restricted idea of what text is, which is this: text is word. You hand in your text, and then it’s handed over to the designer, but you have no contact with that person. The is theirs, the s are theirs; they just do whatever they want, and you have no discussion with them about how the presentation actually relates to what the text is about."
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Novelists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesWomen authors from the United StatesUniversity of Oxford alumniSmith College alumni
Original Language: English
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as quoted by Mieke Chew in:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Helen_DeWitt
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Helen DeWitt
is an American novelist and short story writer. Her debut novel ' (2000) sold over 100,000 copies and in 2024 was included by The New York Times in its list of the "100 Best Books of the 21st Century".
5 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Helen DeWitt →
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