Robert Boswell: Urban Apocrypha & the Role of the Writer in the Realm of the Radically Real, or, Exploding Poodles (July 1993)

Robert Boswell describes urban legends as a form of folk art whose appeal to popular stereotypes writers can use and explore, bringing complexity to simplistic views. He draws on Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” to suggest ways that writers can investigate urban legends, revealing their tangled roots; he argues, “art must be politically incorrect in order to make connections to that which it is not permissible to openly express.”