Porochista Khakpour on Stephen Dixon: An Excerpt from McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #63
Life versus art. This was the concept that hovered around our heads, us young aspiring writers in the then second-best writing program in the country (Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars). The question was fashionable at the time. You could be the writer who had discipline and craft and skills, or you could be the writer who really lived, whose adventures were the anecdotes that made up intricate plots, whose characters were based on a cast so real they were called “larger-than-life.” Our program was split between those camps, and the question—if it was a question, even—was never resolved. I recall regularly staying out all night with my set of loud, messy, rebellious types, while other students were back in their apartments by dinnertime. We found this amusing but easy to understand: They were in the camp that chose art; we had chosen life. Different roads, that was all.
“Where the hell would you get an idea like that? Dichotomies? When, ever? I mean, really, you are asking where do I stand?” my most beloved professor and mentor, Stephen Dixon, asked me in his office one day when I brought up this idea of the two camps, thinking I was really onto something. But his face quickly let me know that was not the case.
“You’re kidding, right?” he went on.
“Yes,” I lied sweetly with a tight smile.
“Good,” he grumbled. It always
