Under the Influence… of Arnost Lustig
by Charles Conley
I was the worst writer in my MFA program my first year. I know this thought isn’t unique, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true. My confidence was shot. I was lost as a writer and so concerned with impressing my teachers and fellow students that I had abandoned whatever it was that made me worth accepting into the program in the first place. The following summer, I attended the Prague Summer Program, where Arnost Lustig was my workshop teacher. We began each class with jokes. We wrote a fable every day. We read (after a fashion) Aristotle’s Poetics. We discussed […]
