“From the affirmation of communal norms, the maintenance of traditional forms, and the patronage of people whose lifestyle their works glorify, artists, including literary ones, moved, through the Romantic and modernist periods, ever more toward attacking, resisting, undermining, exploding, experimenting, and standing on the outside of the cultural mainstream. Continuity and tradition do not, in the world we’ve inherited, define excellence, especially not in our collective caricature of the creative visionary. Freshness of mind, prophetic brilliance, distinctiveness of voice define excellence.”

— from the “Introduction” to Workshops of Empire: Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing in the Cold War by Eric Bennett

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