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Keep it up!

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Labatut's on the list. Thanks!

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Wonderful thoughtful piece! One quibble though I may be misunderstanding what kind of documentary you are referring to. People were making profitable docs at least since 1990s. Trials of Life was a massively successful Time Life series, Real World launched around then, Paris is Burning, etc.

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writing to capture reality is like fucking to capture virginity

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Rock on

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founding

To follow up on Burton's comment, interested to know your thoughts on how nature documentaries fit into your thinking. At least in the ones made decades ago, the animals really were being filmed in the nature, but the events, like hunting and kills were staged to the extent that the predator and prey were thrown together, and the animals were often given names and personalities. In its essence it was posited as real. So are we just reinventing "Wild Kingdom"?

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I think David Shields' _Reality Hunger_ is terrific. I used it when teaching Creative Writing at George Washington U--to Tom Mallon's horror. Apparently, they knew each other from Brown? though Mallon is much older, but his reaction to my use of the book I found alarming and a form of censorship to no effect, fortunately. I rely on _Reality Hunger_ in a new essay coming on October 4 via Fictionistas and I'll repost it in some way on my Substack site. The "borderland between reality and imagination" is what Shields is indeed exploring. I'll never give up on fiction--and I don't think Shields is either. He raised the bar along with all those he quotes to do this. On another note from this fine essay, W.G. Sebold's _Austerlitz_ was a bolt of lightning for me "out of the clear blue sky" you mention. We should be in conversation. Thank you for subscribing: That's how I found you and damn glad I did. xo Mary

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Thinking today about Roberto Bolano and how his 6626 while I wasnot strong enough to have a face for all the maqulera dead he totes up in there . He left me room enough to keep pointing my attention in the border direction? The other notefromme is to remind us that if somebody welove needs to be filmed? To help monetize them? There is that method of Adam Curtis's.

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