Lauren Groff on Work and Love
This week’s story, “ Between the Shadow and the Soul ,” is about a fifty-year-old woman named Eliza who has
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This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter— sign up here . A few years ago I gave a talk at an art school in Manhattan, and I could tell that the students were quickly losing interest in my admittedly ponderous presentation. So in an attempt to regain their attention, I asked the students what their goals were. A guy in the back of the room quickly blurted out, “To do whatever the fuck I want and get rich doing it!” Some of the other students cringed and recoiled, but just as many shook their heads in tacit agreement. I was instantly overcome by feelings of rage and contempt—but also irrelevance, like there was nothing I could really say that would help that guy achieve his goals. I tried to respond in a tactful manner, but I’m sure there was more than a hint of passive aggression in my words. I’ll admit: my immediate thought was, “God, what an obnoxious, entitled creep!” But when I heard some of the other students’ answers, I found that many of them were vague, muddled, or conflicted. I struggled (and failed miserably) to give advice to a guy who said only that he wanted to “effect change.” I still thought the first person was an obnoxious, entitled creep, but at least he had a clear goal. And then, as I stood on the subway platform headed home, I felt an all-too-familiar type of cringe washing over me. I hadn’t exactly spent my life hiding my drawings in the floorboards of my house, and I certainly hadn’t refused financial compensation for my work. In fact, that obnoxious creep had actually articulated my life goals, distilled to their most crass, naked form. I literally gasped as the depth of my hypocrisy revealed itself. As is often the case for me after leaving various meetings or events in Manhattan, I had a momentary urge to leap into the subway tracks as the next train approached. All of which is to say I think it’s important for aspiring artists to be honest with themselves and […]
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This week’s story, “ Between the Shadow and the Soul ,” is about a fifty-year-old woman named Eliza who has
The British realist director Mike Leigh loves the term “character actor,” which he uses often and with zeal. To him,
