Responses

We’re delighted to share three responses to Scott’s essay “Between the Wolf in the Tall Grass and the Wolf in the Tall Story” from Paul Bloom, William Gatewood, and Daniel Raeburn. Jump to responses by Paul, William, and Daniel. * * * The Arrogance of Empathy by Paul Bloom I don’t regret calling my last […]

Posted inNonfiction, Quotes

‘The Loneliest Place for a Writer’: Gary Lutz on Writing (and Rewriting) Great Sentences

Early this summer I attended a disappointing writing workshop where a clearly unprepared instructor stressed the importance of creating air-tight sentences without bothering to suggest how. “Interrogate each one of your sentences,” she kept saying, then referring, over and over, to the first five lines of Lolita. While the overall experience was unsatisfying, it reminded me […]

Essay

Between the Wolf in the Tall Grass and the Wolf in the Tall Story “It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the unconscious is laboring under a moral compulsion to educate us.” —Cormac McCarthy, “The Kekulé Problem,” Nautilus, April 20, 2017 I. The Smartest Person in the Room I often say that one of the […]

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