The Virtue of Writing Issue

The Fall 1989 issue of Ploughshares, guest-edited by James Carroll. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different and personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.

Acclaimed novelist and nonfiction writer James Carroll compiles this volume of stories and essays subtitled "The Virtue of Writing." This edition of Ploughshares is devoted to the morality and ethics of fiction. As Carroll says in his introduction, "The ploughshare is the sharpened blade of the plow, the thing that cuts the furrow. But it is also, in our culture, a moral symbol. The founders of this magazine made a moral and political statement when they chose its name, and it is that aspect of the meaning of Ploughshares that this issue emphasizes. It is dedicated to the idea that writing, and in particular, the writing of fiction, is a morally serious enterprise; and more than that, that fiction inevitably involves us in a mode of thinking which is, at its core, thinking about morality." With fiction from Tony Ardizzone, Jennifer Egan, Alice Hoffman, Ward Just, George Packer, Pamela Painter, and Annie Dillard.