—more exactly in storymaking, ... Aristotle declares in effect that since real life now and then includes unlikely coincidences both idle and consequential ... a storymaker may legitimately deploy suc...
The difference here 'twixt simple and witty folk, if the truth be known, is that your plain man cares much for what stand ye take and not a fart for why ye take it, while your smart wight leaves ye wh...
So, I begin each day with a gesture of cynicism, and close it with a gesture of faith; or, if you prefer, begin it by reminding myself that, for me at least, goals and objectives are without value, an...
My classes commenced on the seventh of September, a tall blue day as crisp as the white starched blouses of the coeds who filed into my classroom and nervously took their seats. Standing behind the le...
How come you write the way you do? an apprentice writer in my Johns Hopkins workshop once disingenuously asked Donald Barthelme, who was visiting. Without missing a beat, Don replied, Because Samuel B...
Am I boring you? I don't really care, I suppose, but I'll be more comfortable if I knew all this interested you. No doubt when I get the hang of storytelling, after a chapter or two, I'll go faster an...
That life sometimes imitates art is a mere Oscar Wilde-ish curiosity; that it should set about to do so in such unseemly haste that between notes and novel (not to mention between the drafted and the...
Mi è sempre parso, nei pochi romanzi che ho letto di quando in quando, che esigano parecchio dai lettori quegli autori che iniziano i loro racconti furiosamente, nel bel mezzo delle cose, invece che e...
Indeed, if I have yet to join the hosts of the suicides, it is because (fatigue apart) I find it no meaningfuller to drown myself than to go on swimming.