stop arguing with your teacher and figure it out yourself

I absolutely love this story about a student who got fed up with his teachers' insistence that novelists put symbolism in their work, and he decided to find out for himself. The responses are fabulous, and come from Updike, Kerouac, Rand, Heller, Bradbury, Asimov, etc etc. These are the kinds of questions that professionals are more than happy to take the time to answer.