A Conversation With Ariel Levy About Writing a Memoir That Avoids ‘Invoking Emotional Tropes’

So let’s talk about your realization, or your narrative persona’s realization, through the course of the book, that the rules do apply. They do apply, although—

Well only one: nature, mortality, age, the body. There is that: nobody gets out alive. Like, that. Part of that is your fertility: your fertility will expire, particularly if you’re female; your body will deteriorate, you will age. That is never going to change, that’s life as a human animal. And I think that that’s one of the things that it means to be a grown-up is to slowly, slowly realize that. Remember when you’re a little kid and you’re like, “Yyyyeeeah, I’m actually not gonna die”?

Source: Longreads
Published: Mar 14, 2017
Length: 17 minutes (4,391 words)
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