Thinking about "Literature"

This book marked a liberating moment for my thinking and writing. Examining certain thought patterns or structures which normally remain hidden in writing made the production of ideas easier. It is odd how taking risks can sometimes make things easier.

Trying to answer the question "What is literature?" certainly involves risks, because conventional definitions prove to be remarkably unstable in the 21st century. As the novelist Charles Johnson suggested when asked whether Middle Passage is his major work, the language we use in discussing literature is often "so unexamined, so riddled with presuppositions, and the lack of critical thought" (E-Channel 3 July, 2011 --http://ethelbert.miller.blogspot.com ). He is right in demanding that we examine our language.  When we do so, we discover the horrors of dialectics, the fragility of rhetoric. Perhaps the best literary discourses are notes from a flute in the midst of a hurricane. Only the flutist hears the real sound.