Wednesday, January 2, 2008

some guidance (or perhaps, on embracing the lack of)

In a September, 2001 New Yorker interview, the writer W.G. Sebald describes the process of discovery as "random" and "haphazard," but asserts that "one can find something only in that way." Likening his process to that of a dog running through a field in a "completely unplottable manner," Sebald notes that the dog, following his nose and instinct "invariably finds what he is looking for." Sebald compares this to his own process in the sense that "... you accumulate things, and it grows, and one thing takes you to another, and you make something out of these haphazardly assembled materials. And, as they have been assembled in this random fashion, you have to strain your imagination in order to create a connection between the two things."

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