INTERVIEWER Do you write down your dreams? FERRANTE The rare times that I seem to remember them, yes. I’ve done it since I was a girl. It’s an exercise that I would recommend to everyone. To subject a dream experience to the logic of the waking state is an extreme test of writing. You can never reproduce a dream exactly. It’s a losing battle. But putting into words the truth of a gesture, a feeling, a flow of events, without domesticating it, is also an operation that’s not as simple as you might think.
“Paris Review—Art of Fiction No. 228, Elena Ferrante” at www.theparisreview.org