NOT EVERY WRITER SHOULD LIVE IN NEW YORK

From a letter to Edward Hoagland from Edward Abbey, 16 April 1976:

“I wonder if there even really is such a thing as a ‘red-hot center’ in American literary life? When I try to think of the contemporary American writers, poets, and novelists I most admire, they seem to be scattered all over the landscape [ . . . . ] And I think this is right and wholesome. I think that writers and artists should be scattered, spread out, living among working people (as most of us do), rather than clustered together in herds, interlocking elbows with agents and editors.”