Teju Cole
Teju Cole
Teju Coleis a Nigerian-American writer, photographer, and art historian...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 June 1975
CityKalamazoo, MI
CountryNigeria
fewer pages people
I'd like to meet fewer people who say 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 10 pages I've written,' and more 'Oh, I want to write a book, here are 300 pages I've written.'
countries people presenting running
There are many people who know nothing of a world in which we take the reality of the 'other' seriously. I'm running on that platform: other people in other countries are really, really real, and there has to be a way of presenting their reality that is not condescending to them or about our psycho-social needs.
badly common good people writers
The most common thing I find is very brilliant, acute, young people who want to become writers but they are not writing. You know, they really badly want to write a book but they are not writing it. The only advice I can give them is to just write it, get to the end of it. And, you know, if it's not good enough, write another one.
people mind president
Killing a bunch of people in Sudan and Yemen and Pakistan, it's like, "Who cares - we don't know them." But the current discussion is framed as "When can the President kill an American citizen?" Now in my mind, killing a non-American citizen without due process is just as criminal as killing an American citizen without due process - but whatever gets us to the table to discuss this thing, we're going to take it.
people quality comfort
Still, there's that faint glimmer of hope we feel when we sense, in other people, the same kind of attentiveness to life that we take comfort in. Why else would anyone watch Haneke films or read Sebald? The material is grim, but it's redeemed by the quality of the attention.
america people hopeful
I'm not hopeful about America, and I'm not hopeful about the world, no. Life goes on and, for those of us who are lucky, there's a great deal to enjoy in it. But will things get better for most people? I don't know. I don't see the evidence.
reading writing people
The strange thing, though, is that most people who write novels these days seem to be aware of only a fraction of its possibilities. Kundera goes on and on about this, and I never tire of reading him on the subject, because I agree very deeply with it.
exists societies
Punitive murder by the police and by vigilantes has existed in all societies at some point, and probably still exists in most.
bag biggest bit face seeing tap temptation tricks trying writers
Probably the biggest temptation that young writers face is to be entertaining, to show your bag of tricks and do a bit of tap dancing. I read a lot of things, and I keep seeing this brocade of voice where someone is trying to be too pally with you or ingratiating on the page.
artists attention contains example painters specific sustains whose work
Breughel is an example of an artist - I mean, this is true about artists and painters in general, but he is a specific example of an artist whose work contains more than you think it does at first glance. Whose work rewards, sustains attention and looking.
good knowing novel reader traffic
I am a novelist. I traffic in subtleties, and my goal in writing a novel is to leave the reader not knowing what to think. A good novel shouldn't have a point.
biggest influenced novels source suspicious work writers
I am suspicious of writers who say their work is original and influenced by nobody. If it is, it is probably uninteresting. The biggest source of novels is other novels.
artistic days drive eat food good harder living observer primary privilege strong struggle work york
On many days my primary artistic struggle is, in fact, photography because it is harder to do good work with that. I see myself as an observer of the world who has a strong drive to testify, which I can do because I have the privilege of living in New York with enough food to eat and shelter.
great hip since
Old-school hip hop, i.e., whatever was popular when you were nineteen, is great. Everything since then is intolerable.