thoughts

The very impulse to write, I think, springs from an inner chaos crying for order, for meaning, and that meaning must be discovered in the process of writing or the work lies dead as it is finished. To speak, therefore, of a play as though it were the objective work of a propogandist is an almost biological kind of nonsense, provided, of course, that it is a play, which is to say a work of art.
- Arthur Miller

Does this account for works that get caught up in their own ideological stances? If you are writing from a committed position, pretty much everything is geared towards the advancement of the agenda... what then is the condition of the aesthetic? Or is this when we slide some plays into the 'social' or 'issue based' category?

And another question - have we retreated into a personal shell? Do we write with myopia because we are confident only of our own representational stance, and eschew ownership of public conscience? How do you react to criticism that slots you into a 'self-absorbed urban angst' category?