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Link to original“The continued status of ‘show, don’t tell,’ a self-evident truth, dutifully dispensed to anyone who ventures into a creative writing class, is one proof of their success.” While this adage is often attributed to Anton Chekhov or Ernest Hemingway, it was seized on with the intention of making it difficult to talk about any social issues — outside of how they created direct obstacles for the main character. “The goal, according to Bennett, was to discourage the abstract theorizing and systematic social critiques to which the radical literature of the 1930s had been prone, in favor of a focus on the personal, the concrete and the individual.”