Opening page…
What story do you love that has no lesson?
A work can enlarge a question instead of reducing it to a message.
Your answer
A little context
Someone asks what a novel you loved was about, and you start to answer and stop. It wasn't about anything you could put on a poster. Nobody learned a lesson, and you still think about it years later.
Nearby questions
- Does knowing change it?A piece of writing moves you to tears. Then you learn a machine wrote every word. Does that change it?
- What would you still love if no one could ever see you loving it?Private pleasure, public approval, and the preferences that survive without an audience.
- Can something ugly be great art?Goya's black paintings, a scream in a symphony, a novel built to bore you. Some of the most admired work is hard to enjoy.
- The aura on your screenYou know the Sistine Chapel from images. If you went, what exactly would you be going for?
- The blade and the canvasIf you were angry enough at what it stood for, could you ever be right to put a blade through a painting?
