From an interesting interview in the NY Times:
In your book “On Boxing,” you have a line about how for fighters, life is about the fight and the rest is just waiting. Do you feel that way with writing?
That’s a good question. It points to a philosophical issue of what is essential in our lives and what is existential or incidental. Thinking of my early married life, my husband was a professor, and we talked about books all the time. Though we talked and talked for years, I don’t really remember that dialogue. I don’t remember the students I was teaching, whom I loved. It’s 2023, and I have to concede that I don’t remember those students. All I have left of all that happiness is my writing of that time. A book or two, some stories. I think that’s a profound fact. It’s a kind of devastating fact. Everything that you think is solid is actually fleeting and ephemeral. The only thing that is quasi-permanent would be a book or work of art or photographs or something. Anything you create that transcends time is in some ways more real than the actual reality of your life. If you set your hand on fire right now, it’s ephemeral. It would hurt, but Plato would say it’s not as real as something that transcends time. I am a person who was married, and was very happily married. Yet, that’s all gone now. Where is it?
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