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This Man’s Army | Aug 21 2000

A relevant quote by Nietzche, from “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” contributed by my good and great friend John Shaw: “What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.”

Also, while I have a minute (very busy doing web stuff, very busy), here are a few paragraphs from an email I wrote this morning to a gifted young man who, admiring my stories, wrote that he is afraid that he will never be about to write like me.

As to your college writing requirements, I have to agree: most likely you will never write like me. I suggest, instead, that you try writing like you, since this should prove easier. It took me about 20 years to learn this lesson, so if you learn it in 15, you are ahead of my miserable curve.

One additional word of unsolicited advice. You will probably do well to ignore everything that everyone says about how to write and what constitutes good writing, particularly well-meaning instructors in writing classes. These people, as nice as they may be, are out to DESTROY you.

Paradoxically, I seem to fall into the category of “well-meaning instructor.”