Delighted to share Brendan Lorber’s interview with me in Maudlin House about my tenure editing and publishing Big Other.
Lorber: What is good writing?
Madera: What we talk about when we’re talking about literary writing, though, is love, that is, the art of writing is an eros of writing. And by “eros,” I mean, not only life-affirming and revivifying but life itself. Also, how long would you endure a lover who always said not only the expected, but the hackneyed, whose utterances were full of overused words, phrases, and sentences, a lover whose gestures were rehearsed and mechanically performed? And yet, and yet, this is what we so often accept from artists, literary and otherwise. In other words, always refuse the thanatos of writing, of art, generally; and always pursue, affirm, and propagate the eros of art, literary and otherwise.
JOHN MADERA—Writer, Editor, Publisher 