ep·i·graph
noun
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an inscription on a building, statue, or coin.
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a short quotation or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter, intended to suggest its theme.
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Upon learning what an epigraph was in high school, I became instantly infatuated. As someone who has always had an affinity for quotes that border on the cliche and perhaps oversimplify complex concepts like love and lust and pain and death, epigraphs seem to always speak to me in a very powerful way, sometimes more so than an entire novel can.
Perhaps it’s the way they can so tightly bundle 300 pages of text; 300 pages of emotions and memories; 300 pages of a story, someone else’s story. True or false, fiction or nonfiction, stories are powerful and remain a vital part of the human experience. But there is something so raw and simple about an epigraph, its ability to tell many stories all at once.
The above epigraph is from James Salter’s novel “All That Is”. While it is the first book I have ever read by Salter, I enjoyed its delicate, honest prose, decorated with moments of infatuation, loss and as its New York Times review said “ordinary existence”. What could be more difficult or interesting to recount? The ordinary existence of us all — the moments we don’t remember, fusing with the ones we do.
if only bitches would listen 