The George Saunders graduation speech currently making the rounds of the Internet reminds me of a failure of kindness of my own. I have committed many, of course, too many to remember or recount; I pick on this one, because, quite frankly, besides being memorable in all the wrong ways, it is a little lessContinue reading “A Failure of Kindness”
Tag Archives: George Saunders
‘Write As If Your Parents Were Dead’
Phillip Roth is said to have tendered the following advice–on the art of writing–to Ian McEwan : ‘Write as if your parents were dead.’ By this, I take it that Roth meant for McEwan to write with a distinctive fearlessness, one not courting parental approval, not apprehensive of parental disapproval of writerly indulgence, of libertiesContinue reading “‘Write As If Your Parents Were Dead’”