Q & A with Disquieted Delve seminar guide Sara Guest

Literary Arts: In your opinion, what are the defining factors of an ‘age of disquiet’? When did this age begin and what shaped it? How have literature and art shaped or been shaped by that age?

Sara Guest: It seems unequivocal that we live in a time of struggle—individually, collectively, nationally, internationally—to find quiet. We see it in the political landscape, religion, education, nation-building, the family-unit. But it’s a regime-change in what could be positive ways too. What happened with Iran’s election for instance, when political ferment couldn’t be quelled because technology wouldn’t allow it. It’s tough to pin-point something like “the official beginning of the ‘age of disquiet.’” But I suppose I look for it in the technological revolution that sparked a complete renaissance in communication. Literature and art represent the commerce of ideas about any age. What’s interesting about this age is the core theme is communication, which by its very nature is changing how we take in, engage with and appreciate art.

LA: How do you hope the visuals of the museum’s exhibit will interact with/effect your reading discussions?

SG: I suspect each Delve participant will find his/her way into a link between text and art. Some of us are visual learners and I’m sure this will help bring the themes home. Overall it’s a cool challenge to discuss and wrestle with how different art forms can be connected.

LA: What sort of purpose can participants take from the choice of two non-American authors for this seminar?

SG: One of the biggest tenants of the ‘age of disquiet’ is that culture is more and more overlapping. Even twenty years ago we might have questioned an Irish novelist like McCann who chooses, rather than Ireland, the landscape of his adopted city of New York. And yet it was Frenchman Philippe Petit who gifted McCann the defining metaphor of Let the Great World Spin when he walked the high wire between in the towers in 1974. Today artists are connected not through national identity but through a collective engagement with global questions, concerns and intrigues. I find Zadie Smith and Colum McCann to be good emissaries of this engagement and the symmetry of their texts quite exciting.

LA: What drew you to want to lead a Delve seminar?

SG: It was a great honor to be asked! Previously as a literature editor for Encyclopaedia Britannica and a producer for Oprah’s Book Club, I was the invisible writer behind the curtain. So it’s exciting to be part of a community of readers who have something to teach each other just by the act of being together. And I’m a huge fan of Literary Arts’s programming, which has done so much to make Portland the vibrant literary city I feel humbled to call home.

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