Re: our vines have tender grapes

She's only in my class because it's a requirement -- just wanted to throw
that in -- although it's hard for me to believe she wasn't able to test out
of the requirement.

I don't know that she's a fiction writer, though. I'd be surprised if she
wasn't, but I don't know that she is.

At any rate, I don't have the heart to be dismissive to someone that good.
For that matter, I don't even have the heart to be dismissive to the worst
writer in my class. I can be a close, critical reader, though. And in the
case of the better ones, watch out for signs of falling in love with the
sound of their own voice.

Jim

Scottie Bowman wrote:

> 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.
>
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Received on Sat Feb 22 16:03:26 2003