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I've Always Enjoyed That Kind Of Thing - Thinking About The Production Of Narrative And Why It Is That When We Read A Novel, We Don't Notice The Fact That Someone Who Might Be Very Close-mouthed Or Tight-lipped Is Perfectly Willing To Tell Us A Story In 600 Or 700 Pages.

-Matthew Tobin Anderson

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I've Always Enjoyed That

Matthew Tobin Anderson

...

I've Always Enjoyed That Kind Of Thing - Thinking About The Production Of Narrative And Why It Is That When We Read A Novel, We Don't Notice The Fact That Someone Who Might Be Very Close-mouthed Or Tight-lipped Is Perfectly Willing To Tell Us A Story In 600 Or 700 Pages.

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Keep Thinking. You Can Hear Our Brains Rattling Around Inside Us, Like The Littler Russian Dolls.

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A Lot Of The Drive To Make Narratives Came From Having To Play By Myself As A 5- Or 6-year-old In The Woods.

...for Reading, Once Begun, Quickly Becomes Home And Circle And Court And Family, And Indeed, Without Narrative, I Felt Exiled From My Own Country. By The Transport Of Books, That Which Is Most Foreign Becomes One's Familiar Walks And Avenues; While That Which Is Most Familiar Is Removed To Delightful Strangeness; And Unmoving, One Travels Infinite Causeways, Immobile And Thus Unfettered.

I Was Someone Who Really Loved Fantasy Novels And Science Fiction Novels.

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Why Not Write A Book Which Is As Sophisticated As A Book For An Adult, But Is About The Concerns That Teenagers Actually Have?

...for Reading, Once Begun, Quickly Becomes Home And Circle And Court And Family, And Indeed, Without Narrative, I Felt Exiled From My Own Country. By The Transport Of Books, That Which Is Most Foreign Becomes One's Familiar Walks And Avenues; While That Which Is Most Familiar Is Removed To Delightful Strangeness; And Unmoving, One Travels Infinite Causeways, Immobile And Thus Unfettered.

You Made Her Apologize For Sickness. For Her Courage. You Made Her Feel Sorry For Dying.

Of Course, I Had My Heart Broken As A Teen. I Was Desperately In Love With Myself. Then I Found Out That I Was Completely Shallow. I Haven't Spoken To Myself Since.

One Of The Series I Like Is D.m. Cornish's 'monster Blood Tattoo,' In Which He Creates A Whole Language. Kids Who Are Reading That Are Building A Language In Their Heads. There's No Real Cognitive Difference. I Think Kids Are Excited By Language, And They're Not Always Given Credit For That.

Occasionally People Ask Me How It Is I Write Different Types Of Things, And My Answer To That Is It's Very Natural. You Get Bored Writing One Kind Of Thing All The Time.

It’s The End. It’s The End Of The Civilization. We’re Going Down. No, It’s Sure Not Too Attractive. Lenticels. I Just Hope My Kids Don’t Live To See The Last Days. The Things Burning And People Living In Cellars. Violet. The Only Thing Worse Than The Thought It May All Come Tumbling Down Is The Thought That We May Go On Like This Forever.

We Went To The Moon To Have Fun, But The Moon Turned Out To Completely Suck.

Image Of A Girl Holding A Blaster To A Twin’s Temple. “remember, Bi***. You Can’t Spell ‘danger’ Without Dna.” Blam.

We Americans Are Interested Only In The Consumption Of Our Products. We Have No Interest In How They Are Produced, Or What Happens To Them Once We Discard Them, Once We Throw Them Away.

The Natural World Is So Adaptable...so Adaptable You Wonder What's Natural.

We Must Curb Ourfury, And Allow Sadness To Diminish, And Speak Our Stories With Coolness And Deliberation.

It’s The End. It’s The End Of The Civilization. We’re Going Down. No, It’s Sure Not Too Attractive. Lenticels. I Just Hope My Kids Don’t Live To See The Last Days. The Things Burning And People Living In Cellars. Violet. The Only Thing Worse Than The Thought It May All Come Tumbling Down Is The Thought That We May Go On Like This Forever.

I Looked At Her, And She Was Smiling Like She Was Broken.

There's An Ancient Saying In Japan, That Life Is Like Walking From One Side Of Infinite Darkness To Another, On A Bridge Of Dreams. They Say That We're All Crossing The Bridge Of Dreams Together. That There's Nothing More Than That. Just Us, On The Bridge Of Dreams.

I Don't Know When They First Had Feeds. Like Maybe, Fifty Or A Hundred Years Ago. Before That, They Had To Use Their Hands And Their Eyes. Computers Were All Outside The Body. They Carried Them Around Outside Of Them, In Their Hands, Like If You Carried Your Lungs In A Briefcase And Opened It To Breathe.

A Lot Of The Drive To Make Narratives Came From Having To Play By Myself As A 5- Or 6-year-old In The Woods.

...they Told Me Of Color, That It Was An Illusion Of The Eye, An Event In The Perceiver's Mind, Not In The Object; They Told Me That Color Had No Reality; Indeed, They Told Me That Color Did Not Inhere In A Physical Body Any More Than Pain Was In A Needle. And Then They Imprisoned Me In Darkness; And Though There Was No Color There, I Still Was Black, And They Still Were White; And For That, They Bound And Gagged Me.

…it’s Like A Spiral: They Keep Making Everything More Basic So It Will Appeal To Everyone. And Gradually, Everyone Gets Used To Everything Being Basic, So We Get Less And Less Varied As People, More Simple. So The Corps Make Everything Even Simpler. And It Goes On And On.

If We're Going To Ask Our Kids At Age 18 To Go Off To War And Die For Their Country, I Don't See Any Problem With Asking Them At Age 16 To Think About What That Might Mean.

Image Of A Girl Holding A Blaster To A Twin’s Temple. “remember, Bi***. You Can’t Spell ‘danger’ Without Dna.” Blam.

Of Course, I Had My Heart Broken As A Teen. I Was Desperately In Love With Myself. Then I Found Out That I Was Completely Shallow. I Haven't Spoken To Myself Since.

It's Like A Squid In Love With The Sky.

My Idea Of Life, It's What Happens When They're Rolling The Credits.

Teens Are Not Like The Weird, Dumb Dwarves You Have Around Your House. They Are Actually You When You Were Younger.

I Do Not Know What I Regret. I Sit With My Pen, And Cannot Find An End To That Sentence.

I've Always Enjoyed That Kind Of Thing - Thinking About The Production Of Narrative And Why It Is That When We Read A Novel, We Don't Notice The Fact That Someone Who Might Be Very Close-mouthed Or Tight-lipped Is Perfectly Willing To Tell Us A Story In 600 Or 700 Pages.

Whispering Makes A Narrow Place Narrower.

I Don’t Know. D’you Think? He’s Pretty Wide In The Chest.” The Girl Looked At Me, And I Was Frozen. So I Said, “yeah. I Work Out.” Violet Asked Me, “what Are You? What’s Your Cup Size?” I Shrugged And Played Along. “like, Nine And A Half?” I Guessed. “that’s My Shoe Size.” Violet Said, “i Think He’d Like Something Slinky, Kind Of Silky.” I Said, “as Long As You Can Stop Me From Rubbing Myself Up Against A Wall The Whole Time.” “okay,” Said Violet, Holding Her Hands Up Like She Was Annoyed. “okay, The Chemise Last Week Was A Mistake.

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The Sky Was As Blue As A Stupid Postcard, And The Islands Were As Green As Islands.

Certain Elements Of Teen Life That, 10 Years Ago, Were Very Important To Me Still, Are Becoming Less So As I Get Older. I Mean, Ive Kinda Gotten Over, I Guess Im Saying, The Fact That I Had Trouble Getting A Date For The Prom.

And I Realize That The Decision To Be Human Is Not One Single Instant, But Is A Thousand Choices Made Very Day. It Is Choices We Make Every Second And Requires Constant Vigilance. We Have To Fight To Remain Human.

I Am Messaging You To Say That I Love You, And That You're Completely Wrong About Me Thinking You're Stupid. I Always Thought You Could Teach Me Things. I Was Always Waiting. You're Not Like The Others. You Say Things That No One Expects You To. You Think You're Stupid. You Want To Be Stupid. But You're Someone People Could Learn From.

I Could See My Face, Crying, In Her Blank Eye.

If We're Going To Ask Our Kids At Age 18 To Go Off To War And Die For Their Country, I Don't See Any Problem With Asking Them At Age 16 To Think About What That Might Mean.

You Made Her Apologize For Sickness. For Her Courage. You Made Her Feel Sorry For Dying.

I Wanted To Say Something To Cheer Her Up. I Had A Feeling That Cheering Her Up Might Be A Lot Of Work. I Was Thinking Of How Sometimes, Trying To Say The Right Thing To People, It’s Like Some Kind Of Brain Surgery, And You Have To Tweak Exactly The Right Part Of The Lobe. Except With Talking, It’s More Like Brain Surgery With Old, Rusted Skewers And Things, Maybe Like Those Things You Use To Eat Lobster, But Brown. And You Have To Get Exactly The Right Place, And You’re Touching Around In The Brain But The Patient, She Keeps Jumping And Saying, “ow.

I Am Messaging You To Say That I Love You, And That You're Completely Wrong About Me Thinking You're Stupid. I Always Thought You Could Teach Me Things. I Was Always Waiting. You're Not Like The Others. You Say Things That No One Expects You To. You Think You're Stupid. You Want To Be Stupid. But You're Someone People Could Learn From.

I Write For Teens Partially To Work Out Whatever It Was That I Needed To From My Own Teenage Years.

I Don’t Know. D’you Think? He’s Pretty Wide In The Chest.” The Girl Looked At Me, And I Was Frozen. So I Said, “yeah. I Work Out.” Violet Asked Me, “what Are You? What’s Your Cup Size?” I Shrugged And Played Along. “like, Nine And A Half?” I Guessed. “that’s My Shoe Size.” Violet Said, “i Think He’d Like Something Slinky, Kind Of Silky.” I Said, “as Long As You Can Stop Me From Rubbing Myself Up Against A Wall The Whole Time.” “okay,” Said Violet, Holding Her Hands Up Like She Was Annoyed. “okay, The Chemise Last Week Was A Mistake.

I Don't Know When They First Had Feeds. Like Maybe, Fifty Or A Hundred Years Ago. Before That, They Had To Use Their Hands And Their Eyes. Computers Were All Outside The Body. They Carried Them Around Outside Of Them, In Their Hands, Like If You Carried Your Lungs In A Briefcase And Opened It To Breathe.

Whispering Makes A Narrow Place Narrower.

It's Like A Squid In Love With The Sky.

...they Told Me Of Color, That It Was An Illusion Of The Eye, An Event In The Perceiver's Mind, Not In The Object; They Told Me That Color Had No Reality; Indeed, They Told Me That Color Did Not Inhere In A Physical Body Any More Than Pain Was In A Needle. And Then They Imprisoned Me In Darkness; And Though There Was No Color There, I Still Was Black, And They Still Were White; And For That, They Bound And Gagged Me.

I Completely Love Music. I Used To Be The Music Critic At 'the Improper Bostonian.' It's Just Something I've Always Loved Very Deeply.

We Are The Nation Of Dreams. We Are Seers. We Are Wizards. We Speak In Visions. Our Letters Are Like Flocks Of Doves, Released From Under Our Hats. We Have Only To Stretch Out Our Hand And Desire, And What We Wish For Settles Like A Kerchief In Our Palm. We Are A Race Of Sorcerers, Enchanters. We Are Atlantis. We Are The Wizard-isle Of Mu.

At Long Last, You May No Longer Distinguish What Binds You From What Is You.

The Natural World Is So Adaptable...so Adaptable You Wonder What's Natural.

Its A Very 18th-century Thing To Have A Book Broken Into Several Volumes.

Empedolces Claims That In Utero, Our Backbone Is One Long Solid; And That Through The Constriction Of The Womb And The Punishments Of Birth It Must Be Snapped Again And Again To Form Our Vertebrae; That For The Child To Have A Spine, His Back Must First Be Broken

I Miss That Time. The Cities Back Then, Just After The Forests Died, Were Full Of Wonders, And You'd Stumble On Them--these Princes Of The Air On Common Rooftops--the Rivers That Burst Through The City Streets So They Ran Like Canals--the Rabbits In Parking Garages--the Deer Foaling, Nestled In Dumpsters Like A Nativity.

I Wanted To Say Something To Cheer Her Up. I Had A Feeling That Cheering Her Up Might Be A Lot Of Work. I Was Thinking Of How Sometimes, Trying To Say The Right Thing To People, It’s Like Some Kind Of Brain Surgery, And You Have To Tweak Exactly The Right Part Of The Lobe. Except With Talking, It’s More Like Brain Surgery With Old, Rusted Skewers And Things, Maybe Like Those Things You Use To Eat Lobster, But Brown. And You Have To Get Exactly The Right Place, And You’re Touching Around In The Brain But The Patient, She Keeps Jumping And Saying, “ow.

I Feel Like It's Important Every Once In A While To Estrange Ourselves From The Familiar To Remind Ourselves Of The Potentialities Of People, How Many Different Ways There Are Of Being.

I Miss That Time. The Cities Back Then, Just After The Forests Died, Were Full Of Wonders, And You'd Stumble On Them--these Princes Of The Air On Common Rooftops--the Rivers That Burst Through The City Streets So They Ran Like Canals--the Rabbits In Parking Garages--the Deer Foaling, Nestled In Dumpsters Like A Nativity.

Perhaps His Gloom Was Due To His Profession, That He Lived Among Fallen Empires, And In Reading These Languages That Had Not Been Spoken By The Common Man In Centuries, He Had All About Him The Ruin Of Language, Evidence Of Toppled Suburbs, Grass Growing Among The Mosaics, And Voices That Had Been Choked With Poison, Iron, Age, Or Ash.

I Eat Broccoli. I Think About The Plot. I Pace In Circles For Hours, Counter-clockwise, Listening To Music. I Try To Think Of One Detail In The Scene I'm About To Write That I'm Really Excited About Writing. Until I Can Come Up With That One Detail, I Pace.

A Library Is An Adjustable Wrench For Opening The Head.

We Went To The Moon To Have Fun, But The Moon Turned Out To Completely Suck.

And I Realize That The Decision To Be Human Is Not One Single Instant, But Is A Thousand Choices Made Very Day. It Is Choices We Make Every Second And Requires Constant Vigilance. We Have To Fight To Remain Human.

Perhaps His Gloom Was Due To His Profession, That He Lived Among Fallen Empires, And In Reading These Languages That Had Not Been Spoken By The Common Man In Centuries, He Had All About Him The Ruin Of Language, Evidence Of Toppled Suburbs, Grass Growing Among The Mosaics, And Voices That Had Been Choked With Poison, Iron, Age, Or Ash.

We Are The Nation Of Dreams. We Are Seers. We Are Wizards. We Speak In Visions. Our Letters Are Like Flocks Of Doves, Released From Under Our Hats. We Have Only To Stretch Out Our Hand And Desire, And What We Wish For Settles Like A Kerchief In Our Palm. We Are A Race Of Sorcerers, Enchanters. We Are Atlantis. We Are The Wizard-isle Of Mu.

I Feel Like It's Hard To Get Into Historical Novels Where You Know What The Story Is Far Too Well.

Historical Novels

You Need The Noise Of Your Friends In Space.

There Is A Power In Names. Olakunde Told Us Of Ashe-the Power Which Runs Through All Things, Subtle And Flexible, Which Find Its Most Potent Expression In Human Utterance; So That It Is A Terrible Thing To Call Down Imprecations On An Enemy, Or To Wish For Anything But Good, For What Is Said Out Loud Is Forged Into Truth.

Keep Thinking. You Can Hear Our Brains Rattling Around Inside Us, Like The Littler Russian Dolls.

I Could See My Face, Crying, In Her Blank Eye.

I Looked At Her, And She Was Smiling Like She Was Broken.

We All Flee In Hope Of Finding Some Ground Of Security

I Can't Tell You How Irritating It Is To Be An Atheist In A Haunted House.

The Sky Was As Blue As A Stupid Postcard, And The Islands Were As Green As Islands.

Empedolces Claims That In Utero, Our Backbone Is One Long Solid; And That Through The Constriction Of The Womb And The Punishments Of Birth It Must Be Snapped Again And Again To Form Our Vertebrae; That For The Child To Have A Spine, His Back Must First Be Broken

I Was Someone Who Really Loved Fantasy Novels And Science Fiction Novels.

Science Fiction

It's Insulting To Believe That Teens Should Have A Different Kind Of Book Than An Adult Should.

I Feel Like It's Important Every Once In A While To Estrange Ourselves From The Familiar To Remind Ourselves Of The Potentialities Of People, How Many Different Ways There Are Of Being.

I Write For Teens Partially To Work Out Whatever It Was That I Needed To From My Own Teenage Years.

I Feel Like It's Hard To Get Into Historical Novels Where You Know What The Story Is Far Too Well.

Historical Novels

There's An Ancient Saying In Japan, That Life Is Like Walking From One Side Of Infinite Darkness To Another, On A Bridge Of Dreams. They Say That We're All Crossing The Bridge Of Dreams Together. That There's Nothing More Than That. Just Us, On The Bridge Of Dreams.

Its A Very 18th-century Thing To Have A Book Broken Into Several Volumes.

Older Teens Tend To Write To Me And Say, 'thank You For Not Writing Down To Teenagers.'

One Of The Series I Like Is D.m. Cornish's 'monster Blood Tattoo,' In Which He Creates A Whole Language. Kids Who Are Reading That Are Building A Language In Their Heads. There's No Real Cognitive Difference. I Think Kids Are Excited By Language, And They're Not Always Given Credit For That.

Older Teens Tend To Write To Me And Say, 'thank You For Not Writing Down To Teenagers.'

…it’s Like A Spiral: They Keep Making Everything More Basic So It Will Appeal To Everyone. And Gradually, Everyone Gets Used To Everything Being Basic, So We Get Less And Less Varied As People, More Simple. So The Corps Make Everything Even Simpler. And It Goes On And On.

There Are Times When Friendship Feels Like Running Down A Hill Together As Fast As You Can, Jumping Over Things, Spinning Around, And You Don't Care Where You're Going, And You Don't Care Where You've Come From, Because All That Matters Is Speed, And The Hands Holding Your Hands.

Spinning Around

I Do Not Know What I Regret. I Sit With My Pen, And Cannot Find An End To That Sentence.

My Idea Of Life, It's What Happens When They're Rolling The Credits.

People Talk About The Beauty Of The Spring, But I Can't See It. The Trees Are Brown And Bare, Slimy With Rain. Some Are Crawling With New Purple Hairs. And The Buds Are Bulging Like Tumorous Acne, And I Can Tell That Something Wet, And Soft, And Cold, And Misshapen Is About To Be Born. And I Am Turning Into A Vampire.

A Library Is An Adjustable Wrench For Opening The Head.

Then It Was This Big Thing. She Was Like, 'i Never Want To See You Again', And I Was Like, 'fine. Okay? Fine. Then Get Some Special Goggles.

I Can't Tell You How Irritating It Is To Be An Atheist In A Haunted House.

I Eat Broccoli. I Think About The Plot. I Pace In Circles For Hours, Counter-clockwise, Listening To Music. I Try To Think Of One Detail In The Scene I'm About To Write That I'm Really Excited About Writing. Until I Can Come Up With That One Detail, I Pace.

It's Insulting To Believe That Teens Should Have A Different Kind Of Book Than An Adult Should.

We Americans Are Interested Only In The Consumption Of Our Products. We Have No Interest In How They Are Produced, Or What Happens To Them Once We Discard Them, Once We Throw Them Away.

People Talk About The Beauty Of The Spring, But I Can't See It. The Trees Are Brown And Bare, Slimy With Rain. Some Are Crawling With New Purple Hairs. And The Buds Are Bulging Like Tumorous Acne, And I Can Tell That Something Wet, And Soft, And Cold, And Misshapen Is About To Be Born. And I Am Turning Into A Vampire.

Teens Are Not Like The Weird, Dumb Dwarves You Have Around Your House. They Are Actually You When You Were Younger.

At Long Last, You May No Longer Distinguish What Binds You From What Is You.

We Must Curb Ourfury, And Allow Sadness To Diminish, And Speak Our Stories With Coolness And Deliberation.

Occasionally People Ask Me How It Is I Write Different Types Of Things, And My Answer To That Is It's Very Natural. You Get Bored Writing One Kind Of Thing All The Time.

I've Always Enjoyed That Kind Of Thing - Thinking About The Production Of Narrative And Why It Is That When We Read A Novel, We Don't Notice The Fact That Someone Who Might Be Very Close-mouthed Or Tight-lipped Is Perfectly Willing To Tell Us A Story In 600 Or 700 Pages.

I Completely Love Music. I Used To Be The Music Critic At 'the Improper Bostonian.' It's Just Something I've Always Loved Very Deeply.

There Are Times When Friendship Feels Like Running Down A Hill Together As Fast As You Can, Jumping Over Things, Spinning Around, And You Don't Care Where You're Going, And You Don't Care Where You've Come From, Because All That Matters Is Speed, And The Hands Holding Your Hands.

Spinning Around

Why Not Write A Book Which Is As Sophisticated As A Book For An Adult, But Is About The Concerns That Teenagers Actually Have?

There Is A Power In Names. Olakunde Told Us Of Ashe-the Power Which Runs Through All Things, Subtle And Flexible, Which Find Its Most Potent Expression In Human Utterance; So That It Is A Terrible Thing To Call Down Imprecations On An Enemy, Or To Wish For Anything But Good, For What Is Said Out Loud Is Forged Into Truth.

Then It Was This Big Thing. She Was Like, 'i Never Want To See You Again', And I Was Like, 'fine. Okay? Fine. Then Get Some Special Goggles.

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