Monday, March 20, 2017

The Devil is in the Details

Books being written
Are strewn with pitfalls
For those who write them

A tendency to sermonize
A veering into allegory
A lack of plausibility.

If one creates an imaginary garden,
The toads in it should be real.

Only tell of events which have already happened
In Joyce's "nightmare" of history

Only describe technology
Already available.

No made-up gizmos
No made-up laws
No made-up atrocities.

God is in the details,
They say.

So is the

Devil.

Margaret Atwood
(arranged quote,
derived from her NYT article,

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