Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Shane McCrae Interview at Puerto Del Sol
“…Now, of course, it’s impossible to have an absolutely individual voice anyway, but I think it’s worthwhile to do as much as you can to make yourself sound like yourself, and it’s a mistake to think that’s likely to be accomplished by simply opening your mouth and talking—when you do that, you reproduce what you hear and what everybody else hears. Reading books can help you to shape your voice, and, paradoxically, reading a lot of books can help you to sound more like yourself—it helps to have many examples of how other writers have made themselves sound like themselves, and it helps to see that it is in some ways a very artificial process. That said, not growing up in a house full of books—and I didn’t grow up in a house full of books—can make one feel as if one doesn’t have advantages others do. But one does have the advantage of the language of one’s home, and one can always read books later to see if books will help one express that language. And other things can help—music, for example, has shaped my language as much as books have.”
