"For Harrison, whose interior life is like a rich vein she can tap at will, there seems to be no moment, no feeling, too private, peculiar or uncomfortable to render in words."

— Fortini, Amanda


Date
April 3, 2016
Metaphor
"For Harrison, whose interior life is like a rich vein she can tap at will, there seems to be no moment, no feeling, too private, peculiar or uncomfortable to render in words."
Metaphor in Context
"I'd been taught never to talk about money, because, like talking about sex and politics, it was vulgar; like religion, it was private," Harrison declares in "True Crimes: A Family Album," her latest collection of essays written for various magazines and anthologies over the course of a decade. In spite of her proper upbringing, Harrison has no qualms about poking around in the back alleys of the mind, places that polite society prefers to avoid. With startling candor and almost clinical attention to detail, she writes about the sort of behaviors, thoughts and experi­ences most of us don't care to recall, let alone lay bare and examine for an audience. For Harrison, whose interior life is like a rich vein she can tap at will, there seems to be no moment, no feeling, too private, peculiar or uncomfortable to render in words.
(p. 9)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Amanda Fortini, "Review: Kathryn Harrison's 'True Crimes: A Family Album,'" New York Times Book Review (April 3, 2016), p. 9. <Link to NYTimes.com>
Date of Entry
04/06/2016

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.