Deracinados - bred in suburbia, atopia, the generic North American milieu - might as well have been born in cyberspace and raised in the food court of an international airport. Or an Old Navy outlet. If they're writers, they have one authentic subject: rootlessness. They'll never have the Deep South of Flannery O'Connor, the working class New Jersey of Bruce Springsteen, the midcentury Souwesto of Alice Munro, the seething Victorian London of Dickens. Pretending to have a true place they know in a radical, intimate way can result only in frantic mimicry. Their life is a postmodern patchwork and they have no native soil. They can write only of their exile, create books that will be their one home.
- from the series of memos "New Frames of Feeling: Eclectic Dispatches" in Workbook: Memos and Dispatches on Writing by Steven Heighton. It's a thoughtful, fun book. Writers, treat yo selves.
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