id842240121
Link to originalthe Iowa Writer’s Workshop “wanted literary craft to be a pyramid.”⁴ At the foundation were grammar and syntax, or “Meaning, Sense, Clarity… Then came character, then metaphor… everything above metaphor Conroy referred to as ‘the fancy stuff.’ At the top was symbolism, the fanciest of all. You worked from the broad and basic to the rarefied and abstract.” By treating any kind of abstract or political content like the junk food at the top of the food pyramid, only to be indulged in sparingly, he effectively stifled a generation of writers’ willingness to talk about anything beyond the immediate problems of the individual.