An Interview with Alexander Chee
What is the role of creative writing to you and what do you envision its role is in society?
AC: "Well, for example, what I know about the Chinese emperors of times gone by is from Mencius. A poet. Not from any historical record those emperors commissioned.
What does that mean? It means what we do is not frivolous. What we do is record the culture, for the times we live in and the time to come. We communicate the values of the culture to each other and to posterity. This is so important. But we’ve been made to feel it is not important because of a war against our culture waged by people who have a vested interest in obscuring their role in what is happening now. The treatment of the arts as decorative is criminal. Art, as the comic artist Lynda Barry says, is an immune system, for each of us. If we don’t participate, we’ll die."
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on Friday, February 26, 2010 at 2:37 PM.
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