Please write a similar diatribe against "the Hero's Journey." The world would be a better place.

Which is not to say that every female/black/Latin/gaywhat have you author is worth reading. God no. But if a collection of fifteen stories contains work by fifteen white American males who stick their dicks into fifteen bottle-blond wives, that collection of stories isn't as good as it could be.

"If you ask one type of man, 'What does a novel do?' he will reply placidly: 'Well–I don't know–it seems a funny sort of question to ask–a novel's a novel–well, I don't know–I suppose it kind of tells a story, so to speak.' He is quite good-tempered and vague, and probably driving a motor bus at the same time and paying no more attention to literature than it merits. Another man, whom I visualize as on a golf-course, will be aggressive and brisk. He will reply: 'What does a novel do? Why, it tells a story of course, and I've no use for it if it didn't. I like a story. Very bad taste on my part, but I like a story. You can take your art, you can take your literature, you can take your music, but give me a good story. And I like a story to be a story, mind, and my wife's the same way.' And a third man he says in a sort of dropping regretful voice, 'Yes–oh dear, yes–the novel tells a story.' I respect and admire the first speaker. I detest and fear the second. And the third is myself. Yes–oh, dear, yes–the novel tells a story . . . The more we look at the story (the story that is a story, mind), the more we disentangle it from the finer growth it supports, the less we shall find to admire. It runs like a backbone–or may I say a tapeworm, for its beginning and end are arbitrary . . ."

E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, as quoted and elided by Samuel R. Delany in About Writing

Actually I find story absolutely fascinating, which is why I sometimes write Freytagian "good stories" and about as often write ones that cause the sort of reader who has been to a fiction workshop to run in circles and make strange noises. Incidentally, Nick, I hope you'll get around to taking a whack at "community" before you're done. Ideally followed by a whack at "individualism."

If you tell a group of commercial fiction writers that sometimes the appropriate response to a work of fiction is to fold the book in your lap and spend a few minutes in contemplation?

They will look at you as though you'd just vomited-up a dozen squirrels, each of whom unrolled a mucus-covered banner reading, "We mourn the passage of Bin Laden," and then make outraged squealing noises punctuated the word 'sales.'

Bad moment, dude. Bad moment.