"At this time I was also a professor of literature, and I truly despised academia. I enjoy teaching very, very much, but the life of an American university professor in the liberal arts amounts to participating in a Ponzi Scheme, and I truly couldn’t stand the preciousness and lack of work ethic among my colleagues.
"When a writer is also involved in academia, a bubble can form around them which cuts off the writer from the actual society and audience that he wants to capture. I found university life unpleasantly hermetic and without consequence or stakes, and I had to admit that at some point I’d seemed to assume ambitions that were never my own, only what I’d been told a writer should want (to be a ‘professor’, to teach writing workshops, etc.) So when I destroyed that first novel and began a new attempt, instead of fulfilling other people’s ambitions or aesthetics, I went inside myself and asked what type of story I wanted to tell, what sorts of characters I wanted to talk about, what obsessions I wanted to discuss, etc. The mood of literary apocalypse actually allowed me to stop listening to any voices or opinions other than my own. About six weeks later, I’d written the first draft of ‘Galveston.’" http://www.feedbooks.com/interview/125/where-i-came-from-a-lot-of-people-viewed-violence-merely-as-efficient-communication
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