Memo from the Book Awards

Jennifer Egan received the Pulitzer and the Los Angeles Times  Book Prize and all of the other Prizes for her remarkable novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad. When she accepted the L.A. Times Book Award (pictured: David Ulin, Jennifer Egan, Brighde Mullins), she spoke about the fact that she’d write even if no one paid any attention, because she loved writing.  She reminded me of my poetry teacher saying over and over “the only thing that really matters is your relationship to your work.”  Or, as John Ashbery puts it—“He danced on the bridge for the feeling of dancing on a bridge.” Adrienne Rich has written that “you must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.”   Our  lives do depend on our ability to to make things, and to make things is an act that is audacious, difficult and necessary.