The relationships between readers and writers

We had the opportunity to have a conversation with National Book Award-winning author Alice McDermott during the 2018 Books By The Banks festival. She was smart and gracious and warm, and the whole discussion was a delight. But what she had to say about the relationship between readers and writers struck us as particularly poignant.

“The wonderful thing about reading is that it’s so intimate,” McDermott said. “We borrow the voice that we all use when we talk to ourselves. That’s what writers do. It’s agreement with the reader that we’re going to borrow that inner voice.”

Fiction, McDermott said, allows readers to live inside someone else’s head, inside another experience, and in doing so, consider big ideas.

“A book is the author’s way of saying, ‘Let’s look at this together,'” McDermott said. “It’s getting someone to look twice at something, to consider something again, with care.”

When we pick up a book, just for a little bit, our inner monologue gets a script, a new narrative and set of ideas to shake up the usual ways we think. It’s a lovely thought, isn’t it?