Marisa Silver: The Noticing Eye (January 2018)

“We never look at just one thing;” writes John Berger, “we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.”  Drawing from works by Ian McEwan, James Joyce, Raymond Carver, James Baldwin, and others, Marisa Silver discusses the implications of noticing: the ways in which character and conflict can be shaped by it, as well as the ways a writer engages a reader by directing him or her to notice certain images and details.