Anthony Marra Response

The following is a short response to Anthony Marra’s digital guest appearance at Ohio University on February 11th, 2021.

By Ellery Pollard

Anthony Marra doesn’t just write stories. He writes stories that are important, and he writes them well. Marra has studied what it means to be human during times of war and tragedy, and he himself has lived through political upheaval and general uncertainty (as we all have in the last year). He is able to take serious subjects like immigration due to war and carefully inject it with witty humor and clever language, creating truly captivating pieces. He said it himself: “I’m always trying to make myself laugh when I work.”

In an excerpt from one of his unpublished manuscripts, which he virtually read to OU students and faculty, Marra criticized political censorship in the world of movies during the 1920s. He read, “If you only got your news from the pictures, you would find the American south untroubled by Jim Crow, and Europe untouched by fascism.” Such a statement truly marks how important the art of storytelling is, in that without it, many of us would be blinded by rose-colored glasses regarding the past AND the present.

What was interesting about Marra, as one audience member pointed out, was the authority with which he told his story, a historical fiction. He confessed to having completed an incredible amount of research in writing such a piece, which was based off of real historical figures in the movie industry during the 1920s. The story he shared was not based on his own life, rather the life of someone else. Yet it needed to be written, and Anthony just happened to be the chosen one for such a task. He crafted his work using careful language and bolstered it with respect for the past, and so it will without a doubt be a hit within the literary community once published.

If only all writers treated the stories they tell with such thought and delicacy. Perhaps they could create a bridge of understanding between conflicting viewpoints. Such stories can certainly teach us all something about the world we live in, which is why it’s good to remain curious and to read all that we can.

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Anthony Marra is the author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and a collection of short stories titled The Tsar of Love and Techno. Discover more at http://anthonymarra.net