A Series of Present Moments

Alan Cheuse (photo: Josh Cheuse)

"I think in images, which shape themselves into a fluid scene, very much as the twenty-four frames per second of film give the illusion of action on the screen.

What we call memory is all of the images we have stored in our brains as we recollect them in the present.

Thus the past is never the past, it is always the present, as Faulkner says.

If life is a series of present moments, then narrative fiction seems to be connected to lyric poetry in a much more intimate way than the theorists of narrative would have it.

Fiction, like poetry, works at its best when it brings together emotion as well as idea, passion as well as characters in the illusory unfolding we call time—when it works close to the timing of the human pulse, to the flow of our blood, to the beat of our heart."

~ Alan Cheuse, from "An Interview with Alan Cheuse by Neila C. Seshachari" 

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"Alan Cheuse, Novelist And Longtime NPR Contributor, Dies At 75," by Colin Dwyer, NPR, July 31, 2015

Cheuse, A., & Mirvis, T. (2015). Prayers for the living: A novel. London: Fig Tree/Penguin Books. (publisher, library)