“I love to imagine the streets and public spaces of Ravicka all at once, full of every kind of bending, folding, leaping, clapping, head-wagging, hip-bumping interspersed with lilting, drawn-out sounds. Thinking of exchanges taking half the day because Ravickians’ reports on their days and states of being are as elaborate and meandering as are their modes for speech. I’d also argue that this devotion to non-linear and hyper-gestural movement is how they come to know their non-knowing, or rather how they nurture it. A nurtured non-knowing, for me, forms the architecture of the best kind of novel. I think it’s also the foundation for a strong community and perfectly describes the space of drawing.”
― Renee Gladman, Theory for Moving Houses
“Usually, I’m not interested in the truth, especially when I’m writing. I like to stand near it but never close enough to be confused with it. I am less true when I’m writing than I am present, and presence can lead to many different kinds of knowing: some true and some not.”
― Renee Gladman, Theory for Moving Houses
“I am not the kind of writer who steps outside of the work, figures out what needs to happen, then steps back in to make it happen. I have rarely written with the purpose of saying anything particularly. I have written so as to be writing, so as to be in the space of writing and the mode of writing; I have written so as to exist in the space that writing creates, which is something both liminal and grounded, which is out of time and pushed up right next to time.”
― Renee Gladman, Theory for Moving Houses
“There is something about the unfolding of the sentence and the solidity of the paragraph that makes one think this is the space in which I tell the truth, in which I explain, in which I make life stable, in which I create a steady reality to hold against less steady realities. We are taught to tell stories of heartbreak, of triumph, of war, of everlasting love, of social or political conflict, but we are instructed to leave the drama, the complexity, to the details. Let language, the vehicle conveying the story, be a window, let the window be clear and barely ornamental. Language is for looking through, we may have been taught to think. When we are making sentences, we may have been taught to think just use these to get where you’re going. Use these to make sense. If you want to look at living, to slow it down, you’ve got to write a poem. If you want to look at living through sentences, you’ve got to write a story about someone looking at living. You can’t look at living while you are writing prose.”
― Renee Gladman, Theory for Moving Houses
“With anything artists do there is always the risk of being misunderstood. And without a clear program we’ll most definitely be misunderstood. I think therefore the best we can hope for is to be misunderstood in a productive way. So that’s what we should be working on.”
Source: radicalcut.blogspot.com