George Saunders,Timebends, and What Art Is Supposed to Do

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There is a great interview over at BuzzFeed Books with George Saunders in which he discusses Arthur Miller’s Timebends and what he believes the purpose of art is.

I also found myself really excited by Miller’s basic assumptions about art: It’s important, it is supposed to change us, it’s not supposed to be trivial or merely clever, it’s one human being trying to urgently communicate with another. But it was also exciting to see his uncertainty around this stance — the way he couldn’t always execute, and sometimes doubted those ideas, and found himself fighting against the prevailing spirit of the time — like in the 1960s, when everything felt, to him, ironic and faux-cynical. I found myself inspired by the way he went through his life, always holding out a high vision of what art is supposed to do — he strikes me as having been a real fighter.

Ashley Perez lives, writes, and causes trouble in Los Angeles. She has a strong affinity for tattoos, otters, cat mystery books, and actual cats, but has mixed feelings about pants. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She runs the literary site Arts Collide and does work of all varieties for Women Who Submit, Entropy, Jaded Ibis Press, and Why There Are Words. You can find her on Twitter at @ArtsCollide. More from this author →