Dear Nicola, This is no place for a girl like you. You must escape at once, clutching your sanity & thanking God you were warned in time. I wish someone had warned me. However, as you can see, it's now too late. Here I am marooned - like a drunk in a Marseilles brothel - in the midst of these weird Yanks endlessly projecting their quasi religious fantasies onto a modest body of work by one of their minor 1950s writers. Your instincts are absolutely sound & healthy. Fiction is either to be written or read. Anything else is - as you've rightly recognised - simply word-wanking. On this basis, I'm sure you should also give up your college English course. Remember the just deceased Ted Hughes. He too became so disillusioned with his teachers that he packed the whole lot in, took up anthropology & went on write some of the greatest of all modern English poetry. Scottie B.