Gaddis maintained that the writer needed an obsession; he or she would then worry about it like a cat with a rag. The obsession may be hard to spot and it took me some time to discover mine: the stupidity of mankind, its misuse of reason.
Being obsessed with what you think is the stupidity of others suggests you think you're smarter than everybody else. The starry-eyed view of the university seems more than a little insular as well. Remember Yeats:
All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
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