Jeffrey Overstreet
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The Looking Closer Book of Wisdom

A collection of 3 posts
Invitation, not coercion
On Books & Writing

Invitation, not coercion

James P. Carse, from Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility: Storytellers do not convert their listeners; they do not move them into the territory of a superior truth. Ignoring the issue of truth and falsehood altogether, they offer only vision. Storytelling is therefore not
15 Nov 2015 3 min read
Needful thwarting
On Books & Writing

Needful thwarting

Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: The perfect life, the perfect lie, I realized after Christmas, is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. People need to feel
12 Nov 2015 1 min read
The power of material presence
Journal

The power of material presence

To think through things, that is the still life painter's work — and the poet's. Both sorts of artists require a tangible vocabulary, a worldly lexicon. A language of ideas is, in itself, a phantom language, lacking in the substance of worldly things, those containers of feeling
05 Sep 2015 1 min read
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