I offer all of this not by way of aimless self-revelation, but as a way of provoking you to remember your stories about similar incidents in your life, stories about the night, and who smoked what and who was doing who mixed in with outside events, such as the politics of your time, mixed in with the books you were reading, the films you were seeing, the poems you were memorizing, because all of it is your source material.
The New York Review of Books has published Hilton Als’s speech from Columbia University’s School of the Arts Commencement this May. It has gems not just for graduating MFAers but for artists of all sorts.
