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The novels we read allow us to encounter possible persons, versions of ourselves hat we would never see, never permit ourselves to see, never permit ourselves to become, in places we can never go and might not care to, while assuring that we get to return home again
Thomas C. Foster How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form
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The novels we read allow us to encounter possible persons, versions of ourselves hat we would never see, never permit ourselves to see, never permit ourselves to become, in places we can never go and might not care to, while assuring that we get to return home again
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Thomas C. Foster

How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form

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Closing my eyes, I breathe in the air around me.When I slowly re-enter the world, I look into the most intense brown eyes I've ever seen. My breathing catches. I can__ look away. Fuck, he's hot. I can literally feel my brain cells frying. Who's dumb as a rock now, Alexis?I feel completely frozen and can__ move. I don__ even think I want to. Blink, Richards, blink."-AlexisWhat happens to someone who has everything figured out and doesn't let anyone rattle her?To some love is exciting. To her, it's a nuisance.

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I write about scoundrels; my specialty is generally scoundrels. If somebody's done a bad thing, I just talk about it. I don't prettify it or anything. My characters, a lot of them are disgusting _ what they've done in the past. Somebody described them once as "last-ditch attempts at justification." And sometimes that's what my characters or my personae are doing: they're saying, "Yes, I did this and that thing, and perhaps it was evil. It was bad _ maybe it wasn't even evil _ but this is why I did it. You don't know the circumstances surrounding it." And this is the telling; they're almost retelling what happened from their point of view .... I use "bad words" whenever I feel the need, you know, I just put 'em in there _ if it's true to my character. I always like to think that I'm doing things that are true to my charcter. And I hope that, when I'm dealing with violence, for example, that it's not gratuitous, that it's coming out of character that requires that .... I usually start with character, rather than a concept or an idea. If I do want to deal with an idea, I must create a character, in order to work from there, from that angle.