White on time in the novel

Edmund White The Burning Library "Southern Belles Lettres: Cormac McCarthy" Time as a resource...

Since fiction, like music, is primarily a temporal art, any device that inflects the reader's perception of time becomes crucial, not just as a hook for grabbing the reader's attention but as a strategy for modifying the very material out of which this art is composed: time. Plots generate suspense and characters promote a sense of identification, both elements that engender a taut awareness of duration that has little to do with clock time.

It is worth spending a while meditating on the modifications of our perceptions of time.

And so for day 385
02.01.2008