Sarah Braunstein

Sarah Braunstein è l'autrice del racconto della scorsa settimana sul New Yorker, "All You Have to Do". Dall'intervista di Willing Davidson:

In “All You Have to Do,” your story in this week’s issue, Sid Baumwell is a sixteen-year-old in a small town, who, as he puts it, needs “a grievance.” Why is Sid so perplexed by, and worried about, his own mildness?

I think Sid’s desire to leave this town, to grow up, is quite strong—and yet it’s not matched by his day-to-day affect. Isn’t this the scariest thing for a teen-ager, that brand of cognitive dissonance? A desire to run that’s matched only by a desire to be comfortable? He loves his mom. His mom loves him. How does one grow up, and manage the violence implicit in the act of growing, in the face of such steadiness and equilibrium? It may seem to Sid (and, sometimes, to me) that it’s only hysteria—in the form of grievance, or longing, or pain, or trangression—that motivates one, finally, to change. And by change I mean simply to move beyond the town, to become someone new. To grow up. newyorker.