“All objects in fiction, even the most mundane,
shimmer with mystery and meaning, with the souls of the dead as well as the
image of some ultimate reality.
Burnished buttons or
shell-shaped cookies, mummified remains in a museum's glass case
or a mundane registration card from the Florida DMV, these things are no longer
simply the things themselves, but something transformed by the writer's
attention, saved and stored and treasured by the writer’s art.”—Irish-American
novelist Alice McDermott, “Last Word: Things,” Commonweal, July/August
2021
The image accompanying this post was taken by
Slowking4, showing Alice McDermott reading at the 2018 Gaithersburg Book
Festival, May 19, 2018.
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