Monthly Archives: December 2007

In “The Social Side of Literature” at the Guardian, Shirley Dent writes of literary cliques.

Cliques that matter are about breaking rules in private, about pushing against the boundaries of current thinking. They are about ideas. And they come about through people who have certain ideas in common joining together to explore and expound those ideas.

Cliques should be tough places – they’re where artists and writers wash their dirty intellectual linen in private, where no idea is unthinkable and criticism is no-holds-barred. Honesty and trust and privacy combine to permit this.