JOY WILLIAMS: Annie Dillard quotes someone who ventured that “the worst part of being dead must be the first night.” … All art deals with the peculiarity, the strangeness of our situation. We do all this stuff — we think, we marvel, we despair, we care — and then we die. That makes no sense. Surely we should be spending our time differently since that is the case, but how? With the injustice, the political stupidity, the destruction of the natural world, it is tempting to believe (in our non-believing) that things are not what they seem, that there is a link between the dead and the unborn that can replenish the void we know awaits each of us and all we love.

(from a Bookslut interview with Tao Lin)

We’re looking forward to bringing you another fascinating interview with Joy Williams in an upcoming issue of the Believer. As with the interview above, she answered the questions sent to her by postal mail on her typewriter, and mailed them back to the interviewer.

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Image credit: Gallerie XIV