Literary Birthday – 26 October – Marisha Pessl

Happy Birthday, Marisha Pessl, born 26 October 1977.

Nine Quotes

  1. Some stories you should run from while you still have legs.
  2. In America, people of a certain age ask, ‘Where were you when Kennedy was shot?’ In my house you were more likely to be asked, ‘Where were you when you first read The Catcher in the Rye?’
  3. I love people who take time out of their hectic lives to read.
  4. I think every writer has a book that haunts them, and on some level, every book you write is a reaction to it. Lolita is that book for me. Nabokov’s love of wordplay, descriptive detail, artfully complex plots, and his themes of obsession and lost love, are inspiring.
  5. I haven’t always been a writer and I suppose I tiptoed around the idea of writing full time, because it’s so isolating.
  6. Never try to change the narrative structure of someone else’s story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better. Increasing the scale, the depth of content, the universal themes. And I don’t care what those themes are- they’re yours to uncover and stand behind-so long as, at the very least, there is courage.
  7. My writing schedule is like any normal job, 9 – 5, M – F.
  8. Certainly one of the surprising truths of having a book published is realising that your book is as open to interpretation as an abstract painting. People bring their own beliefs and attitudes to your work, which is thrilling and surprising at the same time.
  9. When I’m creating characters, I definitely think of theme songs. Writing for me is very visual, so I sometimes think of it in terms of a movie with a soundtrack, and try to transfer that to words.

Marisha Pessl is an American writer best known for her debut novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Her latest novel is Night Film.

Read: Marisha Pessl Answers 5 Questions On Writing

Author Image can be seen here

by Amanda Patterson

Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: Literary Birthday Calendar

Posted on: 26th October 2013
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