{"id":61419,"date":"2019-12-01T09:14:16","date_gmt":"2019-12-01T09:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/?p=61419"},"modified":"2019-12-01T09:34:33","modified_gmt":"2019-12-01T09:34:33","slug":"the-fact-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/the-fact-that\/","title":{"rendered":"the fact that"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>the fact that I don&#8217;t know how animals think but I think in spirals, dizzying spirals, the fact that the WWF video of a deaf girl talking in sign language to an orangutan was completely fake, and I fell for it, the fact that, landsakes, orangutans don&#8217;t campaign for the rainforest, the fact that the good news right now is that animals don&#8217;t yet know we&#8217;ve wrecked the place, or they don&#8217;t know we did it at least, or they&#8217;d come after us, red in tooth and claw, the fact that it&#8217;s actually pretty lucky they don&#8217;t blame us for it, not like in The Birds &#8230;<\/em> <small>\u2013 Lucy Ellmann (Ducks, Newburyport)<\/small><\/p>\n<p>Ducks is the result of a lifetime spent trying to figure out how to write a novel, seeing where it can go and what I can do with it. Nothing gets \u201cdecided\u201d. These things are not methodically thought out. Writing is not NASA. It\u2019s a fluid, organic process, and the best moments are when you surprise yourself.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to create a different kind of reading experience. I know how to be concise, but that was not the object here. I wanted a long soft slow book that the reader can float around in for some time, to sink or swim, engulfed in one woman\u2019s thoughts.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019re on your own with this book, no nursemaid. I think we\u2019re all adults, and capable of much more adventurous reading than we\u2019re usually offered. I sense people are hungry for something new, and sick of fiction that lazily kowtows to the reader or, God help us, the \u201cmarket\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who thinks writing is easy really isn\u2019t trying hard enough.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t find most \u201cstories\u201d very interesting. They just seem like vehicles for conveying the richer stuff like thought and mood and sensation, sounds, smells, sights, or intimacy and linguistic extravagance. So I kept the plot down to a minimum. The basic technique I used for this book was collage, allowing incongruous juxtapositions to generate new ironies and fresh directions. <!--- https:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/culture\/books\/2019\/11\/lucy-ellmann-you-re-your-own-book-no-nursemaid ---><\/p>\n<p>My narrator could be from anywhere. We all have thoughts, memories, worries, associations, dreams. I was interested in burrowing deep into a consciousness. Don\u2019t we all long to know what other people are really thinking? You never even know what you yourself are thinking, or not without years of therapy anyway. But we know a lot about how Emma Woodhouse thinks. It\u2019s what novels are for. <small>\u2013 Lucy Ellmann <\/small><\/p>\n<p><!--- The reason this book resonates is that we all seem to be thinking in spirals, fueled by nonstop news, social media and multiple screens. While the narrative seemingly jumps from one topic to another in sort of a random stream of consciousness, reading it is an act of focus because it's so mesmerizing. We can all relate to money problems, raising children and illness. Throw in climate change, gun violence and anxiety and you have a picture of what the United States is right now. It's no mistake that the protagonist is a former college history teacher who weaves historical atrocities and trivia in with old movies, an obsession with \"Little House on the Prairie\" and tales from her childhood as she bakes multiple pies for her current business. https:\/\/www.dailyherald.com\/entlife\/20191109\/book-review-lucy-ellmanns-ducks-newburyport-is-brilliant-addictive ---><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>the fact that I don&#8217;t know how animals think but I think in spirals, dizzying spirals, the fact that the WWF video of a deaf girl talking in sign language to an orangutan was completely fake, and I fell for it, the fact that, landsakes, orangutans don&#8217;t campaign for the rainforest, the fact that the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/the-fact-that\/\" class=\"read-more\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,1014],"tags":[3466,2059,3418,3465,3467,2326],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61419"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61419"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61425,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61419\/revisions\/61425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}