Twenty Years After We Had

Two Or Three Things I Know, Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure, And One Of Them Is That To Go On Living I Have To Tell Stories, That Stories Are The One Sure Way I Know To Touch The Heart And Change The World

Gravy Is The Simplest, Tastiest, Most Memory-laden Dish I Know How To Make: A Little Flour, Salt And Pepper, Crispy Bits Of Whatever Meat Anchored The Meal, A Couple Of Cups Of Water Or Milk And Slow Stirring To Break Up Lumps.

There Is A Place Where We Are Always Alone With Our Own Mortality, Where We Must Simply Have Something Greater Than Ourselves To Hold Onto-god Or History Or Politics Or Literature Or A Belief In The Healing Power Of Love, Or Even Righteous Anger.... A Reason To Believe, A Way To Take The World By The Throat And Insist That There Is More To This Life Than We Have Ever Imagined.

... Survival Is The Least Of My Desires.

It Has Seemed To Me That Literature, As I Meant It, Was Embattled, That It Was Increasingly Difficult To Find Writing Doing What I Thought Literature Should Do - Which Was Simply To Push People Into Changing Their Ideas About The World, And To Go Further, To Encourage Us In The Work Of Changing The World, To Making It More Just And More Truly Human.