Grossman vs Montero in the WaPo:
Grossman : That’s true. It’s like music. You can tell who the composer is after a bar or two because of particular stylistic characteristics. I read a paragraph or two of a writer, and I know exactly who I’m reading. Just as you would never hear Miles Davis and think he was Dizzy Gillespie, or that Mozart was Ives, it would be hard to mistake your writing for, say, Mario Vargas Llosa’s.
Montero : You know that musicians as well as authors are always looking for their own language. But it’s more than the language. It’s something to do with ethics and aesthetics.
Amazing conversation between these two. Do read the whole thing.
For a minute there, I thought Lev, the infamous chickenhead, was getting his ass handed to him. But it proved far more thoughtful than that, in part because of the better Grossman’s participation.