Thursday, October 1, 2015

internet favorites for october: favorite enormous eyes

Enormous Eye is a kind of writing project--art project?--by Amy Rose Spiegel of Rookie. Various writers--not all young, but mostly, not all New Yorkers, but mostly--record every single detail of their Saturday, and she publishes the results pretty much unedited. And you're not supposed to go out and have a really dynamic interesting day--just do what you'd normally do.

I got to do one in the spring, and it was my favorite day of living in New York. (It didn't hurt that it was one of the first warm days of spring.) Everything was incredibly vibrant and exciting and fresh, and I felt like I could see it all. I felt half-nervous, half-powerful. I told Eve, this is probably what I hoped being a writer would feel like every day!

Anyways, the whole Enormous Eye experiment is worth reading in its entirety. It TRANSCENDS the sum of its parts. On the one hand, I found it very comforting to realize how many of my writer heroes are introverted like me, or spend a lot of time alone. (Sometimes living in NYC it feels like there's a huge party going on, just beyond my reach.) On the other hand, it reminds me of what the best lecturer I ever had at Harvard, Phil Fisher, said about Joyce's Ulysses--the idea is that in one single day you remember/relive every important thing that's ever happened to you. I also think it's interesting to see who's really blasé about the activity, really bare-bones, and who is a little more writerly.

I have so many favorites, but here is my favorite one ever, by Lola Pellegrino. I also forced Eve to read it.

I also love Haley Mlotek's, so beautiful and simple.

And I love everything by Sarah Nicole Prickett and this is no exception (but have you read her bit in Women in Clothes??).

Here are the other Internet Favorites.

3 comments:

  1. enormous eye is really so wonderful and I love how you put it-- more than the sum of its parts

    Claire
    www.augustlikethemonth.blogspot.com

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    Replies
    1. So true, right!? Have you written one? If so--send me a link!

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