I first read Sophie’s Choice the summer after I graduated from college. I don’t know why I waited so long. I had spent large portions of my childhood compulsively reading Holocaust memoirs. My mother, a children’s librarian, made phone calls and drove me to libraries in other towns to
Tragedy opens up aesthetic possibilities, allowing suprahuman forces to partake as literary subjects that overwhelm individual characters. It is a mode of expression that goes beyond what realistic fiction can provide.