Anne Michaels is the author of one of the most wonderful pieces of literature I have ever read—Fugitive Pieces. It is so carefully and poetically written. If you haven’t read this novel yet, I suggest that you do it. Also, if you enjoy poetry, her collection, The Weight of Oranges, is also equally beautiful.
“Writing the book meant grappling with questions about faith, goodness and the existence of evil--an endeavor that Michaels initially tried to avoid because she found it too daunting. But over time, the characters’ voices became too insistent to ignore.
‘For me, writing is a question of supreme control and complete surrender. Both are essential, and you need to know when to do each.’” - Anne Michaels in an interview with
What do you guys think?
4 comments:
Well said. I'll be back for more once I read the whole article. But the quote above says a lot. To me complete surrender is when your story takes a life of its own and you must allow the pieces to fall in place. You only have control in the creation but stories that can speak for themselves irrespective of their authors are always great. My Prof. from Canadian literature last year always kept going back to this quote... "Trust the tale, not the author."
I'd like to read more on Michaels to see what she defines as "complete surrender"
I would like to say that "Fugitive Pieces" really reached me when I read it last year as part of my Canadian Studies class.
This is a novel that stays with you and it moved me to tears more than once. I still think of it often and I'm outraged, and saddened, and helpless before such atrocities.
I am reminded of a quote from Robert Frost that says "no tears for the writer, no tears for the reader." For me, this ties into what Michael's is saying about surrender. Only through complete surrender can the writer convey deep emotion to the reader.......anything less comes up short.
Supreme Control and Complete Surrender. Touches deep into the soul. As a writer we have the ability to control what we write, and how we write, then in turn have the ability to control our readers emotions to how they will react.
Then to simultaneously surrender ourselves to just write what we feel, and go with the flow is just a Crazy Paradox that makes Sense!
We have the ability to create the story how we like, but at the same time we get lost in our imagination during the creative process...
At least that's how i feel.
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