John Edgar Wideman
John Edgar Wideman
John Edgar Widemanis an American writer, professor at Brown University, and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth14 June 1941
CountryUnited States of America
business facts finding history itself therefore truth understand version
In Haiti, as I understand it, storytelling and history itself are not a business of necessarily elucidating facts or the truth of an incident, but finding the version that is most entertaining and therefore will get retold and live in immortality.
believe pass truth ways whoever
I feel compelled not to pass on a vision of bleakness, destruction or cynicism. I want to tell the truth as I see it, but I also have to believe that individuals - my kids, your kids, whoever - can do something about it, and I want to show the ways in which they can do something about it.
art both certain cultural expresses
What basketball expresses is what jazz expresses. Certain cultural predispositions to make art. All African-American art has a substratum, or baseline, of improvisation and spontaneity. You find that in both basketball and jazz.
change less
Real change is always violent, but it may hurt a lot less than what's in place before the violence occurs.
african aunt came church episcopal family folk historian information members methodist older stories
My aunt Geraldine was the unofficial historian and storyteller. She had all the information about family members and the gossip that came out of the church because we were very much part of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. At family gatherings, the older folk had the floor, had pride of place, and it was their stories I remember.
begin literature next nobel points primary score sentence share time win
The primary thing writing and basketball share is the sense that each time you go out, each time you play or begin a piece, it's a new day. You can score 40 points one game, but the next game, those points don't count. You can win the Nobel Literature Prize, but that doesn't make the next sentence of the next book appear.
aware beginning gauge knowledge life respect
All my life, I've been very aware of my body. I have always used it as a gauge of things. When I look at a person, and I see their body, that's the beginning of knowledge about them. Furthermore, I respect the body.
art business gives inventing love perspective reality
For African-American people, I am in the business of inventing a reality that gives a different perspective - on history, on crime, on art, on love.
anymore body cooperate entertain good life looking substitute surrogate
Writing 'Hoop Roots' was a substitute or a surrogate activity. I can't play anymore - my body won't cooperate - so in the writing of the book, I was looking to tell a good story about my life and about basketball, but I was also looking to entertain myself the way that I entertain myself when I play.
carry grenade hand means notion people quo satisfied status throw writers
Writers transform: they throw a hand grenade into the notion of reality that people carry around in their heads. That's very dangerous, very destructive, but not to do it means you are satisfied with the status quo - and that's a kind of danger as well, because a kind of violence is already being perpetuated.
trying women written
I have written about the women around me. My ancestors, my relatives, lovers. It was a way of trying to make it all make sense.
family home
Home wasn't so much a house as people, family.
definite mean onions order reasonable sliced sort
I often want things to make definite statements. If I order onions sliced thinly on my hamburger, I don't want them to come out sort of medium. But that doesn't mean it's a reasonable desire, in all things.
liked sports stories
I always liked to write and had fun writing, but I didn't have any pretensions about being a writer. I liked to read and liked to putz around and write little stories or poems, but my thing was sports.