Sounds Like Titanic

by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

We in ancient countries have our past—we obsess over the past. They, the Americans, have a dream: they feel nostalgia about the promise of the future. —Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran

Faking is pedagogy. Faking is teaching and faking is learning and faking is the way that all human beings grow, from babies faking speech to teenagers faking coolness to professors faking wisdom. You assign readings in your classes so that your students can imitate other writers, for it is in the faking of other people’s writing that one learns to write.

(Needing a job with health insurance to recover enough from an illness to get another job: an American paradox.)