IJ study archive

The Orin–Steeply interview — "I’m not talking about The Stork’s…"

quote

I’m not talking about The Stork’s death or the Moms’s stability in a thing where they’ll read about it and have to read some authoritative report on my take on it instead of coming to their own terms about it. With it, rather. Terms with, terms about. No, terms with it.

Context

Refusing to discuss his mother, Orin gets snagged mid-refusal on a preposition and worries it three times before he can proceed — "Terms with, terms about. No, terms with it." The usage-infection of p. 1039 exhibited rather than described: even his boundaries have to parse.

In anthology