parallel to one coordinate plane

From Michael Bourne's April 30 essay on The Millions about what the death of newspapers means for writers : "I fear we are creating a generation of riff artists, who see their job not as creating wholly new original projects but as commenting upon cultural artifacts that already exist."

Yep. I worry about that too, and about whether or not I've taken on too much of the generic MFA writing style, defined by Bourne as an "insular, navel-gazing style that has more to do with a response to pr...