What is "Doom Eager"?

Lorrie Moore, from "Better and Sicker"
"Martha Graham speaks of the Icelandic term "doom eager" to denote that ordeal of isolation, restlessness, caughtness and artistic experiences when he or she is sick with an idea. When a writer is doom eager, the writing won't be sludge on the page; it will give readers -- and the writer, of course, is the very first reader -- an experience they've never had before, or perhaps a little and at last the words for an experience they have."

Monday, May 31, 2010

today's found treasure


Found a copy of Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing at the Hospice Thrift Store today for $1.30, which made me excited to find such a treasure at such a price and sad to see any work by such a talent as Atwood for sale for such a pittance, even at a thrift store. I can't wait to read it.

Quote from random page turn:

"In all such magician or wizard or illusionist figures, the question of imposture, of trickery, of manipulation for power of one kind or another, is never very far away. It seems that when the artist tries for a sphere of power beyond that of his art, he's on shifty ground; but if he doesn't engage himself with the social world at all, he risks being simply irrelevant -- a doodler, a fabricator of scrimshaw, a fiddler with bric รข brac, a recluse who spends his time figuring out how many angels can prance of the head of a pen."
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