Melanie Rae Thon’s latest book, As If Fire Could Hide Us, is described not as a novel with three chapters, nor as a collection of three stories, but as “a love song in three movements.” What does it mean to see a story as song, to sing from or toward love, to experience a book’s phases not as sections but as movements? How does writing from or toward love change the music of our sentences or lines, the shapes of our stories, the way we represent others—whether other people or other nonhuman beings? Thon suggests a relationship between attention and attentiveness and this question of love. By quoting Simone Weil, who says, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer,” Thon speaks to what she calls the “ethics of perception,” that we can avert our eyes or risk compassion, in our lives and on the page. A conversation that is as much about living as writing, and one that speaks as deeply to questions of poetry, music, silence, spirit, and yes, love, as it does to story.
In today’s conversation Melanie also speaks generously about her approach to the teaching of writing. In that spirit she offers to all Between the Covers supporters two of her teaching documents, “Memory & Adventure” and “The Gospel of Grief, Grace, and Gratitude.” In addition, for the bonus audio archive she gives a craft talk of hers called “The Ethics of Perception.” This joins craft talks from Marlon James (“The Nine and a Half Rules of Seduction”) and Jeannie Vanasco (“How to Write Memorable Lines”) as well as readings by everyone from Teju Cole to Lance Olsen, Carmen Maria Machado to Jenny Offill. You can find out about all of this and the many other potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community at the show’s Patreon page.
Finally, here is the Bookshop for today’s conversation.
The post Melanie Rae Thon : As If Fire Could Hide Us appeared first on Tin House.
Tice Cin : Keeping the House
Rosmarie Waldrop : The Nick of Time
Percival Everett : The Trees
Myriam J. A. Chancy : What Storm, What Thunder
Tin House Live : Negotiating the Love and Renouncing the Rest with Destiny O. Birdsong and Donika Kelly
Pádraig Ó Tuama : In the Shelter & Borders and Belonging
Adania Shibli : Minor Detail
Tin House Live : Writing On Your Own Terms with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Kaveh Akbar : Pilgrim Bell
Callum Angus : A Natural History of Transition
Douglas Kearney : Sho
Arthur Sze : The Glass Constellation : New & Collected Poems
Anakana Schofield : Bina
Doireann Ní Ghríofa : A Ghost in the Throat & To Star the Dark
Abdellah Taïa : A Country For Dying
Elissa Washuta : White Magic
Rikki Ducornet : Trafik
Jorie Graham : Runaway
Brandon Hobson : The Removed
Viet Thanh Nguyen : The Committed
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Lit Society: Books and Drama
Ex Libris
Write The Book: Conversations on Craft
Pride and Prejudice
Frankenstein
Fresh Air
Myths and Legends