A Quote by Jennifer Egan

I don't really begin with ideas about genre. I certainly wrote a gothic novel, 'The Keep,' that conformed to and, in some ways, played with every convention I knew of to work with in the gothic, but the way I came to it was very instinctive and visceral.
With 'The Keep,' I began with a theory about pitting the isolated disconnection of the gothic realm against present-day hyperconnectedness. I emerged feeling that the gothic genre is all about hyperconnectedness - the possibility of disembodied communication - and that we now live in a kind of permanently gothic state.
Nico was gothic, but she was Mary Shelley gothic to everyone else's Hammer horror film gothic. They both did Frankenstein, but Nico's was real.
I hate the word gothic but I would like to try doing something like that. A gothic sound, not rock, but gothic. There's a difference.
Mention the gothic, and many readers will probably picture gloomy castles and an assortment of sinister Victoriana. However, the truth is that the gothic genre has continued to flourish and evolve since the days of Bram Stoker, producing some of its most interesting and accomplished examples in the 20th century - in literature, film and beyond.
Gothic in its purest sense is actually a very powerful, twisted genre, but the way it was being used by by journalists - 'goff' with a double f - always seemed to me to be about tacky, harum-scarum horror, and I find that anything but scary. That wasn't what we were about at all.
The gothic reminds us that we are mainly driven by our passions; the Gothic deals in illicit desires, in what is prohibited by society.
Southern Gothic is alive and well. It's not just a genre, it is a way of life.
Even at the beginning when I arrived at Givenchy, there were certainly people who supported me, but not everyone loved me. They were saying, "Why an Italian who acts Gothic?" Never mind the fact that Italy is one of the main exhibitors of Gothic art in the world. But it was like, "No, Italians should only do sexy!"
I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.
The gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern when we come close to them; but the gothic gets away.
When I first came on the scene, I don't think people knew what to make of the way I dress, my aesthetic and how that ties into my music. It took a lot of explaining. You don't really see females in country music dressed in all black wearing funeral garb with netting on their face. I have a bit of a gothic sense to me in a lot of ways, with a bit of outlaw country, rockabilly and blues. My subject matter is off the cuff a little bit.
Edinburgh is a sort of gothic fairytale city, and it can be a gothic horror city as well.
Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post Gothic mode.
If I'm a genre writer, I'm at the edge. In the end, they do work like genre fiction. You have a hero, there's a love interest, there's always a chase, there's fighting of some kind. You don't have to do that in a novel. But you do in a genre novel.
Depending on who I am talking about or who's talking through me - if the person is a kind of hip-hop, or rhythm and blues person, or if the person is a kind of old-fashion gothic, meaning gothic attitude, then that will determine what form the poem will take.
I'm interested in the Gothic novel because it's very much a woman's form. Why is there such a wide readership for books that essentially say, 'Your husband is trying to kill you'?
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!