I am, more than anything, a reader of novels, and I was inspired to think of gentleness as an aesthetic category by one particular novel: The Ambassadors, by Henry James. Gentle art demands, and rewards, our attention. And it can do so, importantly, without emptying itself out, or becoming like the “ambient TV” that Kyle Chayka recently wrote about for the New Yorker. At its best, gentle art can create a fictional space of freedom from the grosser aspects of our world. Gentleness is not one of our more celebrated aesthetic categories, but I want to insist upon its value, especially during historical moments like our own, with overlapping crises and ubiquitous violence. I have wanted the kind of art that I have taken to calling “gentle.” But I have been craving a different kind of experience: in my solitude, I have wanted art that takes pleasure and sociability as its central themes, and that wants to share its pleasures and its community with me. Later, those same people opted for a kind of numbing escape in Tiger King or Emily in Paris. John Mandel’s Station Elevenor Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion. In the early days, a lot of people I know reached for stories about disease outbreaks, like Emily St. įor those of us who are both responsible and fortunate enough to protect public health by staying home, the past year has raised questions about what we should be reading and watching and listening to during periods of crisis. We’re almost there! Please give what you can today. We’ve set a goal of raising $10,000 by the end of June. Electric Literature recently launched a new creative nonfiction program, and received 500 submissions in just 36 hours! Now we need your help to grow our team, carefully and efficiently review submitted work, and further establish EL as a home for artful and urgent nonfiction.
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