A little something here to whet the appetite of those folks signed up for our spring class. . . .

In less than four days, we'll be starting Steve Almond's nonfiction tour de force Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, so what better opening act than an essay by Almond himself. In "Once Upon a Time, There Was a Person Who Said 'Once Upon a Time,'" Almond takes a close look at narration, specifically that narrators are slowly disappearing from student fiction (perhaps fiction in general), replaced by stories that are "long on camera work and short on coherence."

I've noticed this in my teaching as well (I had to laugh when Steve mentioned students asking in conference, "Have you seen Memento?" because it is a question I've been asked on more than one occasion by student-writers, as well.) I have found that typically these stories that lack the "sense making" voice of a narrator often lack other traditional fictive elements, as well, such as an identifiable setting, rounded and named characters, a plot grounded in present action. The explanation for all this unfounded (and confounding) mystery is always that the writing is "experimental," but I'm not so sure I buy it.