Literary Greats Answer High School Student's Survey on Symbolism.

[David Morris]

http://boingboing.net/2011/12/06/literary-greats-answer-high-sc.html

When science fiction writer Bruce McAllister was 16, in 1963, he
decided that his English teacher's insistence on seeking out symbolism
in literature was a tedious exercise. McAllister, who had just sold
his first story, was skeptical of the whole idea of symbolism in
literature, so he typed out an ungrammatical, mimeographed
questionnaire about symbolism in literature and mailed it to 150
authors. 75 replied. Some were secretarial responses on the lines of
"Go away, I'm busy," but substantive responses came in from Isaac
Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Ayn Rand, Jack Kerouac, Judith Merril, John
Updike, Fritz Leiber, and others.