narrative is narrative: it needs to entertain, to illustrate, to enlighten. We live by and through narratives because we have an insatiable desire to… - Ilan Stavans

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narrative is narrative: it needs to entertain, to illustrate, to enlighten. We live by and through narratives because we have an insatiable desire to comprehend our circumstances, to share its basic tenets with others, and to appreciate how others tell their own tales. I don’t like the abyss our civilization has built between fiction and criticism. In my view, they are sides of the same phenomenon. I live, I let myself live, in the connection between these sides. All essays are personal — either we recognize it or not — just as all fiction is autobiographical (and all autobiography is fiction). I love the personal essay. It triggers something instinctual in me: to use the “I” as a Virgil, to elucidate what I see, what I think, what I conceive in ways that aren’t for me alone but for everyone.