In the midst of ice and snow, one finds an inverted lime, and beneath that lime, we, the students and one teacher of a certain University of Pennsylvania creative nonfiction class, shall bravely and hopefully brightly but of course I mean metaphorically meet, beginning our conversation about (among other things) voice. Here's what Joyce Carol Oates has to say about that:
Where in life we sometimes (allegedly infrequently) fall in love at first sight, in reading we may fall in love with the special, singular qualities of another's voice; we may become mesmerized, haunted; we may be provoked, shocked, illuminated; we may be galvanized into action; we may be enraged, revulsed, and yet!—drawn irresistibly to experience this voice again, and again. It's a writer's unique employment of language to which we, as readers, are drawn, though we assume we admire the writer primarily for what he or she "has to say."
Published on January 18, 2011 04:14