I'm Dreaming of Being Awake

The other day, I heard a snippet of a phrase uttered by Philip Gourevitch (yes, the new editor of the Paris Review) on the Leonard Lopate Show (on WNYC).

Gourevitch was referring to an interview with Salman Rushdie that was already in the works when he took over the Review, and was talking about how that interview was an excellent transitory point between the old mag and the new incarnation, because Rushdie’s work combines “imaginative writing and real-world events.”

For some reason this phrase struck me as really important. I wandered in the desert of writing from nothing (i.e. my head) for many years before I wandered into the real-life world of journalism with all the confidence of a songbird in a vacuum. Now that I seem to be on a “hiatus” (HIATUS: read: not doing so much), I am drawn to the whirligig that is imaginative writing that takes on real-world events. (See entry on Fawcett story for a good example of the kind of writing I’m talking about.)

A real-world event feels like an anchor.
Imagination on top of that makes me want to giggle.
This seems a happy marriage.

So maybe one of these days soon you really will hear that your trusty McBickle has finally completed her creative non-fiction book proposal…and sold it.

Wouldn’t that be so imaginative yet such a real-world event?
It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.