New Criticism, a school of thought that favored reading what was on the page with only passing reference to the biography of the writer or the period in which the text was written

Like most—maybe all—writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, from reading books.

Long before the idea of a writer’s conference was a glimmer in anyone’s eye, writers learned by reading the work of their predecessors. They studied meter with Ovid, plot construction with Homer, comedy with Aristophanes; they honed their prose style by... See more