Annie Dillard, in The Massa-
of Fiction chusetts Review (Spring 1982), Memorial
Hall, Univ. of Mass.. Amherst. Mass.
Writers often lament the fact that serious literature seldom makes the best-seller lists, and that the marketplace plays such a large role in setting standards for their craft. But Dillard, herself a novelist, finds a "certain grim felicity" in the audience's control over fiction.
Fiction's large public distinguishes it from all the other contempo- rary arts. Today's...