Triage

On Reading, Writing, and the Interior Life

By: Richard Russo

Narrated by: Richard Russo

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls

One of the most valuable spaces for an artist is the inner life—the sacred place where, outside of the constraints of time and space, meaning is extracted from raw experience and fashioned into art. In this timely new essay, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo discusses the work writers do as they sift through experience and work to cultivate rich interior lives. For authors, this often involves performing triage, a constant assessment of events that helps determine what’s useful for a story and potentially enduring.

But what is at stake when we perform triage? Is an artist’s interior life an act of generosity or selfishness?

Reflecting on a year of reading and meditations on the nature of interiority brought up by a global pandemic and orders to stay at-home, Triage is a candid and arresting look at the process that goes into creative work, by one of our most celebrated and bestselling novelists.

A Vintage Shorts Nonfiction Original

A Better Title: Book Reviews by Richard Russo

I know I will listen to this again... I've already mined it once for books to read, but there were a lot in the list. Totally worth listening to.

Basic, and barely abt its claimed subject

Did not need 20 mins — half the essay — on a pandemic we all took part in. College sophomore level notions on interior time. Consecutive sentences that equate ‘introvert’ with ‘socially awkward’ when it’s simply how many people are and has as much claim to being okay as it’s opposite. Payoff not worth the effort.

And I like Richard Russo’s work quite a bit.

Shut up and write.