Parallel Stories: Rachel Cusk
Santa Barbara Museum of Art Presents Acclaimed Writer
It’s no secret that Parallel Stories, the series of conversations between distinguished authors and their peers convened by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, has become the city’s hottest ticket for up close encounters with contemporary literature’s most interesting authors. Whether it’s a chat with a local resident like T. C. Boyle who also happens to be a world-renowned fiction writer, or more frequently, a visit from an internationally known guest like Colm Toibin, the author of Brooklyn, the one constant is the extraordinary quality of the work and the conversation.
On Sunday, January 13, Parallel Stories reaches a new peak of heat-seeking currency with the arrival of Rachel Cusk, whose Outline trilogy is the most critically acclaimed project in English literature of the decade. Subtly subversive while remaining magically accessible, these three books represent a new chapter in the ongoing story of the novel. When Cusk takes the stage to discuss her work with Andrew Winer, professor of English and Chair of the creative writing program at UC Riverside, Santa Barbarans will get a chance to hear what a true innovator of English prose sounds like in the flesh. I got a preview of what to expect from Cusk when I met her for coffee on a recent rainy Saturday in the Funk Zone. What follows are some highlights from a splendid conversation about what really matters in contemporary writing.
The Outline trilogy is famous for the preponderance of free indirect discourse – reported speech that’s more often summarized by the narrator than rendered within quotation marks. Yet you still have significant use for the standard speech markers indicating that someone is speaking. What’s your criteria for deciding when and how to include phrases like “he said” and “she said” in your sentences?
