Writing about love. “Love is the things unseen, the codes that can’t be translated out in public. There are parts of the fairy tale that we don’t see, but there are parts of the ugliness after that we don’t see either, and the breadth of experience even in the most boring version of love is so much larger than a stingy-hearted and cynical movie like Before Midnight imagines. It is easier not to be vulnerable, but cynicism tells a thin and uninteresting story, and often it fails to tell a story at all.”
Zola was kind of a zaddy, no? I’ve been enjoying Brandon Taylor’s newsletter because what I know about literary theory could fit on the head of a pin. Today’s lesson: what the hell is a millennial novel?
25 Essential Notes on Craft. I’m not sure how all of these links so far have turned out to be literary criticism and story structure and writing and aesthetics. Happy Friday!