On the Craft of Fiction—EL Doctorow at 80
Interview Focus Interview VOLUME 29 | NUMBER 1 | FALL 2012 | $10.00 Deriving from the German weben—to weave—weber translates into the literal and figurative “weaver” of textiles and texts. Weber (the word is the same in singular and plural) are the artisans of textures and discourse, the artists of the beautiful fabricating the warp and weft of language into everchanging pattterns. Weber, the journal, understands itself as a tapestry of verbal and visual texts, a weave made from the threads of words and images. This issue of Weber - The Contemporary West spotlights three long-standing themes (and forms) of interest to many of our readers: fiction, water, and poetry. If our interviews, texts, and artwork, as always, speak for themselves, the observations below might serve as an appropriate opener for some of the deeper resonances that bind these contributions. THE NOVEL We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind -- mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality. --- J. G. Ballard WATER Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water.
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