My thanks to Naoko Fujimoto for asking me to talk about my translation of Chantal Montellier’s Social Fiction, thus giving me a chance to do my Jack Handey impression:

One of the great paradoxes of art, to me, is that it can be simultaneously depressing and inspiring, even exhilarating: depressing because it may reveal or confirm disturbing or horrific realities, stripping away the superficial veneers that often conceal them, and yet also inspiring because for anyone to see a thing clearly and, beyond that, to find the language (whether verbal or visual) to name it properly and to communicate it to others is a triumph of imagination and consciousness, which is powerful and radical because it makes us feel less alone in the world and therefore actually makes the world less bleak.

(That was me trying to explain why I find Social Fiction inspiring rather than depressing.)