our vines have tender grapes

    I've been thinking about Jim's gifted young woman.
    What to do with her? Jim himself seems a little
    diffident & Will, of course, favours the softly-softly
    -catchee-monkey approach.

    I think not. You should, Jim, be quite merciless in your
    dealings with her. The talented are the ones who should,
    above all, be discouraged. The world is already jam-packed
    full of people who can write medium good, fairly funny,
    more or less interesting, half original books. The no-hopers
    will fall away soon enough, but you surely to God don't
    want to add yet more 'brilliants' to the 'compellings',
    'irresistibles' & 'enchantings' that already make - every week -
    the Sunday supplements such a waste of good drinking/gardening/
    eating/sailing/fucking/bird-watching/clarinet-playing time.
    And that's just the reviews.

    Once every twenty or thirty years someone will come along
    who has the real, right stuff. They're highly unlikely to have
    applied for a place in a writing class & if they had, the only
    proper help you could offer would be to galvanise their resolution
    further with a good dollop of sneering, unfair, dismissive criticism.

    Scottie B.

-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Sat Feb 22 07:58:07 2003