This flashback at Lapham’s Quarterly makes me realize two things: writers often don’t have much to say about writing and I will never understand how people can get anything out of presentations that really don’t say anything. Is it just the brand name? Really? Vonnegut says it and somehow it’s profound?
But there’s a reason we recognize Hamlet as a masterpiece: it’s that Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely tell us the truth in this rise and fall here [indicates blackboard]. The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.
