Monsters

Here on my screen was the distillation of a peculiar American illness: namely, that we have a profound and dangerous inclination to confuse art with moral instruction, and vice versa.

Successful movies generate a business demand for sequels. Successful books generate a demand for further, similar books. Painters pass through popular periods in their work and may be urged to linger there. For potters, composers, choreographers, the problem is the same. As artists, we are asked to repeat ourselves and expand on the market we have

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On a rainy Saturday morning, some twenty writers, published and aspiring, piled into one of the bookstores for a workshop called “Texts and Betrayal: Secrets and Boundaries.” The session was led by Irena Klepfisz, a poet, essayist, and child survivor of the Holocaust whose work I’ve long admired. After brief introductions, she led the group through... See more