O foolish writer. Now moves. Even in storytime, dreamtime, once-upon-a-time, now isn’t then. - Ursula K. Le Guin

Do you know how to read?'
'No. It is one of the black arts.'
He nodded. 'But a useful one,' he said.

She too had lost her luck, and known death, and gone on.

In many college English courses the words “myth” and “symbol” are given a tremendous charge of significance. You just ain’t no good unless you can see a symbol hiding, like a scared gerbil, under every page. And in many creative writing course the little beasts multiply, the place swarms with them. What does this Mean? What does that Symbolize? What is the Underlying Mythos? Kids come lurching out of such courses with a brain full of gerbils. And they sit down and write a lot of empty pomposity, under the impression that that’s how Melville did it.