Jane Hamilton: How the Master Guides the Student: Shadow and Glare (January 2015)

What do we hope for when our work speaks to an avowed masterpiece? Are we propelled by courage or delusion—or both? Jane Hamilton’s lecture, delivered in January 2015 at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, offers a meditation on the student/master dynamic through the lenses of two pairings: Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Jane Austen’s Persuasion, as well as “White Angel” by Michael Cunningham and John Cheever’s “Goodbye, My Brother.”