Both Flesh and Not: Essays

Part of this problem is political. Academic departments of Creative Writing and “Straight Literature” tend to hold each other in mutual contempt, a state of affairs that student, Program, and serious-fiction audience are all going to regret a lot if it continues to obtain.

verisimilitude

More important for young writers themselves, programs can afford them time, academic (and parental!) legitimacy, and an environment in which to Hone Their Craft, Grow, Find Their Voice,3 etc.

maladroit

schlemiel-comedy

turgid

aphasia

vertiginously

Part of our emergency is that it’s so awfully tempting to do this sort of thing now, to retreat to narrow arrogance, preformed positions, rigid filters, the “moral clarity” of the immature. The alternative is dealing with massive, high-entropy amounts of info and ambiguity and conflict and flux; it’s continually discovering new vistas of personal i

tangled. The danger of the berg is badness and cost—a shift from an understanding of self as a character in a great drama whose end is meaning to an understanding of self as an actor at a great audition whose end is seeming, i.e.,