… little essay in today’s George Washington University newspaper quotes your UD.
There are a few errors of writing in this piece, which I will hereby diplomatically correct.
Scathing Online Schoolmarm keeps her trap shut when UD‘s getting any form of media attention. Rule Number One of this blog.
Some excerpts.
The excerpts that quote me.
As a new generation of writers, we cannot help but … internalize [the recent] deaths [of significant American novelists], some more deeply, or strangely, than others. This is because these artists […] matter greatly, because we make them matter. We internalized their sense of story structure, if only to reinvent, criticize or recreate what they meant.
“It does have an impact on you [as a generation] that these people are gone,” said GW English professor Margaret Soltan, known for her widely read blog, University Diaries. “They produced a version of the great American novel, but at the same time, it seems to me that you’re from a different world.”
We are from a different world, and our literature – with its adeptness [at] switching scenery and [its] emphasis on the self-reflexive, reflects this, perhaps best embodied in the work of David Foster Wallace …
“I would argue that the basic theme of human existence – everyone trying to organize their life so it’s not painful – that theme has been with us since Shakespeare. The basic dilemma of being is not changing,” Soltan said.
Whether we like it or not – personal preferences aside – these writers are important to us, because we have either read them, been influenced by them, or because we were told that they were important. For this reason, we exist in their shadow. To be relevant artists, we are … either [going to] be influenced by their work or make an informed move away from it.
“The whole question of influence and how powerful[ly] you’re going to be influenced is in play here,” said Soltan … Even the notion of artistic trauma is at play, she said.
“Why does an artist’s life seem more difficult, and does that have to continue to be the model?” she asked.
Must future work depend on the trope of the suffering artist? Perhaps not…