“I don’t know what’s going to happen; but I do know what’s capable of happening,” Seneca wrote in a letter. The terror of that statement is why I write myself into a battle against Bowen—not to converse, which seeks understanding; not to argue, which is intellectual; not to confront, out of artistic disagreement, or misunderstanding, or even jealousy, but to hold on to something essential. “[I am] a writer before I am a woman,” she said of herself. Easily I could assert a more absolute position, being a writer before I am a person, or being a writer and nothing more.
