Cinnabar and Alabaster

passages
90. gass on academic publishing: "articles are to be worn; they make up one's dossier the way uniforms make up a wardrobe, and it is not known—nor is it clear about uniforms either—whether the article has ever contained anything of lasting value"
91. "if we think like writers, we will teach like writers rather than as critics"; demonstrations of dillard's essay-writing and critic mary jane dickerson showing that those who do it don't talk about it in the ways teachers/critics do.
94. & publishing essays—even if they do do it, doesn't get them read by one's colleagues—bloom says "but i'd like to talk to my fellow teachers. i'd like to be able to pick up the journal of advanced composition or college composition and communication or rhetoric review and find in them belletristic essay of the kind that we talk about in class and use as exemplary models"—which would "validate this kind of writing as no other sort of acknowledgement could do"
96. she recounts a story of a student writer reading aloud an essay that he couldn't finish without crying, & finishes with "the rest of the class waited in respectful silence until our colleague had regained his composure" (she doesn't draw attention to it in any way, but she writes of her (graduate) student, who is also a writer as she is a writer, as a colleague)