Sandy Klein sent a link to an article about novelist Martin Amis...Talking about the MA course, he said: "If all this does turn out to have a theme, it'll be, `Don't go with the crowd, don't do anything for the crowd, don't be of the crowd or with the crowd'.  "Place an enormous stress on individuality, don't use novelty phrases... Make it fresh, make it your own,make it individual."
 
Instead of developing VN's concepts on singularity and the importance of detail ( a "theme"), novelist Amis seems to be aiming at the shelf of "self-help" in creative writing, as far as the extract from this interview goes...
 
I was reminded of a sentence by Novalis ( inspired by John Donne?): "Every Englishman is an island" - 
which I, actually, only understand in the context in which it was quoted: "... for the insular character of the British made our selective task [ of representative authors] a hard one because English literature, in contrast with the French, is not constituted of literary schools but of individuals..."   ( the original sentence is in Spanish and was written in an introduction by J.L.Borges and M.E.Vázquez )
 
MA's "theme", in this light, seems to me to be somehow emphatically redundant? Or...?


Complete article at the following URL:
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/education/s/1018182_amis_a_hit_with_students

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