On Cynthia Ozick's Mipple

Writing will surprise you. “Sometimes you start out to write a story with a moral purpose,” said Don Marquis, “and wind up writing a story with a moral porpoise.” Cynthia Ozick would understand (link):

At age 22, Ozick set to work on a 400,000-word “philosophical novel,” Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love (“M.P.P.L.” or “Mipple” for short). Ozick intended the Jamesian saga, which set Passion against Reason, to be her magnum opus. Yet the manuscript grew increasingly unwieldy, and after seven years she finally abandoned it, though an eight-page extract survived as the short story “The Butterfly and the Traffic Light.”

Ozick can relax; apparently William Blake had already done it.