Throughout my childhood and young adulthood, proponents of various movements such as Abstract Expressionism and "experimental writing" have pronounced various things I like,such as hyper-realism, plotted stories, and narrative composition to be dead as doornails. I always thought those pronouncements a bit silly. Yet I also find a bit silly the pronouncements that those movements are themselves dead. I keep thinking we are all weaving portions of some great tapestry, but the prevailing model for criticism so often suggests we are only making the One True Piece of Pottery. I would quote the book by the novelist whose telepathic gorilla teaches us New Age ponderings on humanity's place in the universe, except that this book now resides, Left Behind like some Tim Lahaye protagonist over in the "truly damned" section of the bookstore, on the floor of a tiny conference room in an airport hotel in Oakland, California.
In my layover, in Las Vegas, I won seventeen dollars and fifty cents from a slot machine that would let me pick whether I wished to accept 40 coins or "pick again". "Final offer", it would say,and then I would win more coins.
I won about as much as the lost magazines cost. The global equilibrium was restored.
