The Atlantic: When Memories Are True Even When They’re Not

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout discusses Louise Glück’s poem “Nostos” and the powerful way literature can harbor recollection.

Glück seems to be saying that childhood is the only constant, immutable thing, while everything that comes after that—“the rest,” she says, our whole adult life—occurs in the shifty arena of memory. Our whole present tense takes place in the shadows of the original, pure impressions of childhood.
— Elizabeth Strout
"By Heart: When Memories Are True Even When They’re Not"
Joe Fassler, The Atlantic, May 2, 2017