Steve Almond has a excellent piece over at the Rumpus that uses the current FUBAR unraveling at VQR as a springboard to investigate the relationship between editors, ambition, and angry dependence (in 33 loosely jointed parts).

Here’s a highlight:

31. Our job, then, is two-fold: to focus on our own failings as writers. But also to speak more forcefully as advocates for literature. Books are a powerful antidote for loneliness, for the moral purposelessness of the leisure class. It’s our job to convince the 95 percent of people who don’t read books, who instead medicate themselves in front of screens, that literary art isn’t some esoteric tradition, but a direct path to meaning, to an understanding of the terror that lives beneath our consumptive ennui. It’s hard to make this case, though, if all we do is squabble with each other and lament our obscurity.

This is the best thing I’ve read all week.