All that great writing, trapped in mediocre books!
—Elif Batuman
Catachresis leads to anthropophagy.
—David Bentley Hart
Ordinary people have a right to feel harassed when their language is criticized. We have grammar school for that kind of thing after all, and when you’re at dinner or the office, a lesson in verb agreement is tyrannizing. Writers, however, are supposed to be a different sort of breed. Their first love is language. Not ideas, not politics, not even books or other writers or art itself—but language. And, by their own lights, they intend to get the thing right. They seek the information, the instruction, they want the words and forms, because they’re in constant need of ammunition for their nightly campaigns at the writing desk. The mid-century writing workshop was born upon the wings of this desire.
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