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Nathan Englander
“I don’t think fiction is an act of persuasion. Any intent like that corrupts the work. But a good book can absolutely change you. That’s why it’s a subversive form; that’s why despots and totalitarians come after writers. But your intent shouldn’t be to persuade. You can be passionate; you can even have a position. But the idea shouldn’t be that you’re trying to change someone’s mind. The novels that saved me posed questions in a brutal manner, but they didn’t give you the answers. I’d say that even about Orwell. He showed us the experiment of Animal Farm, but it’s not didactic. The same is true of…