Joshua Cohen
Joshua Cohen
Writing is a conviction before it is a craft.
novelists
Novelists can ask - they can ask for anything - but their books are their answers in advance.
argued claim gesture novelist
In mid-20th-century America, it could be argued that the novelist still had the most claim of anyone to omniscience. Whatever he/she couldn't prove, he/she could gesture at.
devices noticed people shakespeare taking trains
Taking trains and trams in Berlin, I noticed people reading. Books, I mean - not pocket-size devices that bleep as if censorious, on which even Shakespeare scans like a spreadsheet.
eat fish low pregnant
I think we've got two messages. If you're not pregnant and you're not going to become pregnant, eat fish. If you are pregnant or you are going to become pregnant, you should still eat fish, but you should eat fish low in mercury.
fewer larger means range rely smaller vocabulary
The larger your audience, the smaller your vocabulary and range of referents - the fewer your means of expression. You can't rely on the luxury of intimacy.
approving endless truly writer
I first read Dostoyevsky when I was 14 years old and was entranced. Dostoyevsky truly is a writer for 14-year-olds, and I mean that in the most approving way - approving of his energy, and rage, his endless pessimism, and endless innocence.
alive basic engines fairly jewish jews kept life machines outsource qualities regard seems
To outsource your memory to machines - which is what many of us do with regard to our use of search engines - seems to me to be fairly antithetical to the basic qualities of Jewish life that have kept the Jews alive for so long.