![]() ![]() Having difficulty was also what got me writing in short bursts, and once I got started it was wonderfully freeing. ![]() Anything that still seemed funny or scary or involving for four seconds…If you read the pages in reverse order, they work about the same.” Or drive, or park wherever and take notes. So to get through, I began scribbling notes. Like a repulsive videotape was on automatic replay in my head. “Various horrible things had happened, as they sometimes will, and I was having difficulty. In an interview with BOMB Magazine on the tail of the book’s release, Robison explained why it ended up this way: Like, coincidentally to me, the two last chapbooks I’ve been working on. Why Did I Ever is written in 536 vignettes, some just a few lines long, some a few pages. I had just finished one of Paul Auster’s ‘80s paperbacks, and was looking for my new quarry, scanning the “Miranda July Picks” table. (At the bookstore where I used to work, their books sat side by side on the shelves, and would sometimes get mixed up.) But I didn’t pick up Robison’s novel Why Did I Ever, published in 2001, until a recent, searching evening at the Strand. Not Marilynne Robinson, whose novel Lila did coincidentally just become a finalist for the National Book Award, and which I loved, and who is also the reason for my knowing about Mary. ![]()
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