The artifice lies in the selection of detail. In life, we can swivel our heads and eyes, but in fact we are like helpless cameras. We have a wide lens, and must take in whatever comes before us. Our memory selects for us, but not much like the way literary narrative selects. Our memories are aesthetically untalented.
—James Wood, How Fiction Works, §39
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theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks