Twenty years ago, when I first came to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont, we let our cell phones die. We were moving off-radar. I remember the feeling of immersion almost physically.
There was nowhere else I was supposed to be. It still feels that way, refreshingly so, but I miss the completeness of the off-radar version. Around the same time, I was completing an MFA at Bennington College.
In the evenings, faculty and visiting writers gave readings. During winter residencies they read and lectured in VAPA, a stark and somehow architecturally intimate space. Finding a seat felt tense.
I cannot emphasize enough the way it felt like something was truly at stake during these evening readings, and how intensely I listened. I felt astounded by how much art, life, and knowledge moved within these writers. In those days as a student, I wanted to publish good books.
But I also wanted to possess what produces a good book—a good mind. I know it’s dangerous to romanticize the past, particularly one’s own coming of age. People were still profoundly distracted twenty years ago.
We avoided difficult books. And I have spent much of my adult life teaching young writers whose seriousness and curiosity humble me. But I have also watched—felt—my own attention change.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
