notoriety

[Patricia Chui]

siano at cceb.med.upenn.edu (Brian Siano) wrote:

 The thing is, when some people write fiction, some things just
_feel_ right, and trying to explain _why_ it feels right is trying to
justify and explain some fairly private (and perhaps inexplicable)
mental processes. That's actually a pretty scary thing for any writer;
there's always the chance that, upon some humorless examination, one's
own thought processes might be suddenly revealed as being a lot less
noble or selfless than one wnats them to be.



This reminds of when, in college, my Contemporary American Lit. class
had Ishmael Reed as a guest speaker (we had just read MUMBO JUMBO).
Someone asked Reed, "I've noticed that you didn't use any quotation marks
in your dialogue.  What sort of message were you trying to impart
by leaving them out?"

Reed answered, "Well, I dunno.  Everyone was trying to be artsy and
avant-garde back then, so I just did that because I figured it looked
sort of different and artsy.  I guess, in retrospect, maybe I should have
used quotation marks after all."

We all sat there a little stunned.  So much for symbolism.

Patricia Chui