“This moment is a great leveler. My inner resources are the opposite of capitalism—not to rely on anything other than your capacity to make stuff as a way of spending your time. I’ve always thought that. It’s all in the work. What I would say to my kids when they were going to school: be sure to make something today even if you’re making trouble. The idea is maker’s knowledge.”
Franzen’s strength is probing concepts we have been raised to emulate or strive for. The question of how secrets can either fester or come out is treated on practically every page of the novel.
Zink’s narrative raises great questions about the nature and credibility of people on all sides of environmental matters—and the ways that language may be used to cloud rather than to clarify core issues.
Ric Burns on why narrative is the most important ingredient to any good documentary film, American or no.
The Common Reader, a publication of Washington University in St. Louis, offers the best in reviews, articles and creative non-fiction engaging the essential debates and issues of our time.
The story of Delyte Morris and the Southern Illinois University he created is what Robert A. Harper calls “a story of unlikely success and a tragic end.” It does read like an American tragedy, somehow, based in a rustic start, ambition, ingenuity, and the fallibility of good intentions.
