"Novelists come out of these great standing pools of water called Masters of Fine Arts programs," Tom Wolfe declared on Friday, his left arm in a sling but the rest of his white beclothed self rattling sabres at the highfalutin fictitioners.
"It's wiped out an entire generation. It's a catastrophe. It's so sad it's almost worth writing about."
Wolfe came close to channeling his inner Rush Limbaugh a number of times Friday, but did anyone else find themselves nodding at this particular diatribe?
And, no, it has nothing whatsoever to do with my college flame publishing her second novel.
Actually, Leah's noveling benefits from her formative writing years, when she trained to be a journalist. She likes discernible plots. Sympathetic characters. Accessible themes.
Kind of like what we cast our lines for, out here in the real world. Even Wolfe admitted he could not imagine writing his own fiction without applying immense amounts of reporting to the process.
Back to Wolfe's point: Has contemporary fiction become too obtuse and self-referential for its own good? Is Wolfe right that we courageous narrative journos are "riding the wave" that will have a much greater influence on popular culture than our novelist cousins? Or was he just pumping our egos by putting other people down?
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