It is not just Mowgli who was raised by a couple of wolves; any child is raised by a couple of grown-ups.
From “An Unread Book,” Randall Jarrell’s 1965 introduction to Christina Stead’s The Man who Loved Children, a family novel unlike any other.
I thought that since I was better, my therapy should end soon. I was impatient, and I wondered: How did therapy come to an end? I had other questions too: for instance, How much longer would I continue to need all my strength just to take myself from one day to the next? There was no answer to that one. There would be no end to therapy, either, or I would not be the one who chose to end it.
Lydia Davis, from the short story “Therapy” in her collection Break it Down.
The problem usually lies in the relationship between the story and the truth. The story has to obey the truth, to represent it, like clothes represent the body. The closer the cut, the more pleasing the effect. Unclothed, truth can be vulnerable, ungainly, shocking. Overdressed, it becomes a lie.
Rachel Cusk, “Aftermath,” in Granta 115
