HERE
How many times, reading this or that commentary on Weil, have I nourished like thoughts. "Saints" are by nature, beyond imitation. All imitation. We know them for what they are because they are like nothing and no one else.
For being such a one, there is no model, and everything that after comes to resemble them can be nothing more than imitation.
Weil's writing has long haunted me. It is a presence that, since I first read her work, has never ceased to challenge me. But to what end? For what purpose? I have no answer. Her words chill me, repel me, and that is why they never lose their hold, never lose their power to inspire.
My short story, A Theology of Anorexia began as attempt to imagine the intellect and sensibility of Simone Weil as an American woman. Or rather, to imagine Simone Weil transported into our time. I ended up with a story... but the thought experiment failed. It was at that point when I began to realize that the short story would not do for me. That I wanted more than story... something expansive enough allow me to work more intimately at the level of the artifice, to throw aside the pretense of not pretending.
And yet, and yet ... Why is it I think Bataille and Weil should be approached only by another writer-saint? Why do I dream idly of a book written at the level of their thought, their life, their writing?
How many times, reading this or that commentary on Weil, have I nourished like thoughts. "Saints" are by nature, beyond imitation. All imitation. We know them for what they are because they are like nothing and no one else.
For being such a one, there is no model, and everything that after comes to resemble them can be nothing more than imitation.
Weil's writing has long haunted me. It is a presence that, since I first read her work, has never ceased to challenge me. But to what end? For what purpose? I have no answer. Her words chill me, repel me, and that is why they never lose their hold, never lose their power to inspire.
My short story, A Theology of Anorexia began as attempt to imagine the intellect and sensibility of Simone Weil as an American woman. Or rather, to imagine Simone Weil transported into our time. I ended up with a story... but the thought experiment failed. It was at that point when I began to realize that the short story would not do for me. That I wanted more than story... something expansive enough allow me to work more intimately at the level of the artifice, to throw aside the pretense of not pretending.
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