Conversations on Writing

[On Fiction]
1) "UKL: The 'grammar bullies'—you read them in places like the New York Times, and they tell you what is correct: You must never use 'hopefully.' 'Hopefully, we will be going there on Tuesday.' That is incorrect and wrong and you are basically an ignorant pig if you say it. This is judgmentalism. The game that is being played there is a game of social class. It has nothing to do with the morality of writing and speaking and thinking clearly, which Orwell, for instance, talked about so well. It's just affirming that I am from a higher class than you are. The trouble is that people who aren't taught grammar very well in school fall for these statements from these pundits, delivered with vast authority from above. I'm fighting that. A very interesting case in point is using 'they' as a singular. This offends the grammar bullies endlessly; it is wrong, wrong, wrong! Well, it was right until the eighteenth century, when they invented the rule that 'he' includes 'she.' It didn't exist in English before then; Shakespeare used 'they' instead of 'he or she'—we all do, we always have done, in speaking, in colloquial English. It took the women's movement to bring it back to English literature. And it is important. Because it's a crossroads between correctness bullying and the moral use of language. If 'he' includes 'she' but 'she' doesn't include 'he,' a big statement is being made, with huge social and moral implications. But we don't have to use 'he' that way—we've got 'they.' Why not use it?"

2) "DN: You've said that modernist writing manuals often conflate story with conflict. What do you mean by this?
UKL: Well, to preach that story is conflict, always to ask, 'Where's the conflict in your story?'—this needs some thinking about. If you say that story is about conflict, and that plot must be based on conflict, you're limiting your view of the world severely. And in a sense making a political statement: that life is conflict, so in stories conflict is all that really matters. This is simply untrue. To see life as a battle is a narrow, social-Darwinist view, and a very masculine one. Conflict, of course, is part of life, I'm not saying you should try to keep it out of your stories, just that it's not their only lifeblood. Stories are about a lot of different things."

[On Poetry]
3) "DN: Can you parse that out a little bit for us? Because it seems like the pestle is a technology just as language is a technology.
UKL: Of course it is, it's a great technology, and it lasted us for hundreds of thousands of years. My objection to the use of the word 'technology' these days, is that people think 'technology' means 'high technology,' resource-draining technology such as we delight in. And of course, a mortar and pestle is a very refined technology and a very useful one. All of our tools, the simplest tools, are technology, and a lot of them have been perfected—you can't improve upon them for what they do. A kitchen knife. It does what a kitchen knife does in human hands and you can't beat it. You can get an elaborate machine that slices meat for you and so on, but there you go. You're beginning to seek the save-time or don't-touch-it-yourself thing that high tech leads us toward. I just keep finding this, people saying, 'You're antitechnology.' Well, come off it. [Both laugh.] I write with a pen or a pencil or on a computer. That's my job. I use technology all the time, but if I didn't have the computer or the pen or the pencil, I would end up scratching it on wood or stone or something."

[Contemplation at McCoy Creek]
4) "Slowly, in silence, without words,
the altar of the place and hour is raised.
Self is lost, a sacrifice to praise,
and praise itself sinks into quietness."