Under the Influence… of Stuart Dybek
The first serious writing course I took was an undergraduate seminar on image taught by Stuart Dybek. Stuart stressed to us the importance of the well-chosen detail, the picture that would sear itself onto the reader’s retina all at once, creating a meaning-packet that was intuitively felt but also stood up to thematic interrogation. He gave an example that’s never left me: a drop of blood in a puddle of lime juice. I don’t know whether this image came off the top of his head or if it was taken from a published piece by another writer; I don’t remember […]
