After graduating from college, one of my writing professors gave me several books to keep me going. There was Gigantic by Marc Nesbitt and American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell, both of which have been great influences. The other was 'Almost No Memory' by Lydia Davis. It's a short story collection that I have cherished. It's both personal and abstract--intimate and observant. It gave me permission to craft a story out of the smallest of moments. It allowed me to forget about length or word count and focus on the weight of each word and the structure of each sentence. It's a book I refer back to often. I'm now getting my master's in fiction writing. I'm grateful for my professor's guidance in such a pivotal moment.
"When I was in high school, it was cool to be depressed. Emo music had just hit the mainstream and suddenly it was a sign of artistic depth to have an eating disorder or to self harm. I, eager to be accepted, let myself dive into the depths of a nagging anxiety and self-destructive tendency I have had as long as I can remember. My friends initially gave me the attention that I was convinced would make me feel better, but eventually they began telling me that they couldn't be around me--that I was a force of chaos and destruction in their life. Anne Sexton told me why they came to hate me for what we all believed was cool. Depression is not glamorous. Suicide is not poetic. Mental illness is terrifying. It lurks in you, it hangs over you, it is omnipresent and deadly. Anne Sexton viscerally expresses her brushes with insanity, her hospitalization, her suicide attempts, and, in her bouts of wellness, her terror that they would not last. She was killed by her mental illness, and that knowledge was enough to scare me into seeking treatment. The horrifying beauty of her words, the dreadful finality of her death, they stand as a monument, reminding me what is at stake and why I must fight."
"My name is Seth Fowler and I chose Oliver Twist as the book that changed my life. I'm not so sure that it actual changed my life, but it did change the way I think. I spent some time traveling throughout India and Nepal over the past year. In that year I encountered many young children who faced child labor in some terrible factories and mills. It relates well with what Charles Dickens had to go through as a child, and what the character Oliver has to go through as well. This book seriously made me sit down and think about the problems with the social classes and gave me a drive to shed light on the many flaws amongst classes. Oliver Twist has given me a desire to pursue social work along with journalism as a career to get the stories out to the world about child labor and the other countless crimes committed towards children around the world."
