Move (James Frey)

Love.

Hate.

Simple words.

Joy.

Rage.

That can’t express what they really mean.

Beauty and horror.

Admiration and disgust.

Things that shape and move our lives and make us who we are and allow to believe, regardless of what we believe in.

The first time I read Tropic of Cancer my life changed.

The first time I stood beneath the Gates of Hell my life changed.

The first time I walked into the Pollock room at MOMA my life changed.

I had never seen or felt or experienced anything like what I did when I experienced these things. There were no words for the feelings for what they did to me, and there still aren’t.

Awe doesn’t work.

Humility doesn’t work.

Admiration doesn’t.

My only interest in writing, is to make a reader feel things in powerful ways. When I write, I want to destroy you. I want to make you cry. I want to make you laugh and cringe and turn away and not be able to turn away.

My only interest in writing is try to tap into that place, that truth, that beauty, that horror, that disgust, that love, that fear, that misery, that beauty, that terror, that misery, that joy, that profound that all of us feel and know and believe, but that words fail to convey.

I don’t care how I do it.

Or what it’s called.

Or where it’s categorized or shelved in a bookstore or library.

Or what rules I break.

Or what conventions I ignore.

Or what expectations I defy.

When I sit down, my only is to do to a reader what Rodin did to me, what Miller did to me, what Pollock did to me. What any great work of art does to someone who experiences it.

Move you to some place beyond words.

Pour citer cette ressource :

James Frey, "Move (James Frey)", La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), mai 2014. Consulté le 27/07/2024. URL: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/litterature/entretiens-et-textes-inedits/move-james-frey-