I Tell My Students You Have An

...i Have Come To Make Distinctions Between What I Call The Academy And Literature, The Moral Equivalents Of Church And God. The Academy May Lie, But Literature Tries To Tell The Truth.

It Has Seemed To Me That Literature, As I Meant It, Was Embattled, That It Was Increasingly Difficult To Find Writing Doing What I Thought Literature Should Do - Which Was Simply To Push People Into Changing Their Ideas About The World, And To Go Further, To Encourage Us In The Work Of Changing The World, To Making It More Just And More Truly Human.

Change, When It Comes, Cracks Everything Open.

The Bottom Line Is I'm Writing To Save The Dead. I'm Writing To Save The People I Have Lost, Some Of Whose Bodies Are Still Walking Around.

Writing Is The Only Way I Know To Demand Justice From An Uncaring Universe.