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But sometimes, very occasionally, songs and books and films and pictures express who you are perfectly. And they donβt do this in words or images, necessarily; the connection is a lot less direct and more complicated than that. When I was first beginning to write seriously, I read Anne Tylerβs Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, and suddenly knew what I was, and what I wanted to be, for better or worse. Itβs a process something like falling in love. You donβt necessarily choose the best person, or the wisest, or the most beautiful; thereβs something else going on. There was a part of me that would rather have fallen for Updike or Kerouac, or DeLillo β for someone masculine, or at least, maybe somebody a little more opaque, and certainly someone who uses more swearwords- and, though I have admired those writers, at various stages in my life, admiration is a very different thing from the kind of transference Iβm talking about. Iβm talking about understanding β or at least feeling like I understand- every artistic decision, every impulse, the soul of both the work and its creator. βThis is me,β I wanted to say when I read Tylerβs rich, sad, lovely novel. βIβm not a character, Iβm nothing like the author, I havenβt had the experiences she writes about. But even so, this is what I feel like, inside. This is what I would sound like, if I ever I were to find a voice.β And I did find a voice, eventually, and it was mine, not hers; but nevertheless, so powerful was the process of identification that I still donβt feel as though Iβve expressed myself as well, as completely, as Tyler did on my behalf.
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