Interview in the Believer with Gary Lutz, editor 5_trope online literary magazine
BLVR: You have called film "the perfect storytelling medium" and have said that you "don't read fiction for the story." In a certain sense I completely understand your point. But in another sense I wonder: if language is the only driving force behind fiction, why not just abandon fiction for something purely language-driven, like poetry?
GL: I think that movies are the ideal medium for getting characters from one place to another without making a big deal out of routine movement, and at the same time you can get the colors of the rooms or the neighborhoods, the weather, and emotionally convenient music on the soundtrack. Nobody has to come out with dulling declarations of "Then she got into the car" or "There he goes to the bathroom again." How-to books on the short story instruct writers to block out scenes as plays in miniature. Something in me wants to counter: then why not just write a play or movie script instead? Why not try to do in a sentence or paragraph what can't be done in a shot or filmic sequence? Anyway, I am not one for plots--I think I recall somebody having remarked that the word "plot" itself gives off a whiff of burial dirt--and I find the concept of "cause and effect" to tediously overrated.
As for fiction versus poetry, the border between the two seems less secure than ever. A lot of writing passes back and forth without anyone summoning the authorities. Some people have told me that what I write is poetry, that it could be laid out as such. But I am a sucker for old notions of poetry and would never think of my paragraphic jitter in that light. Besides, regarding my stuff as prose is a much more cost-efficient use of paper. The reader gets a full page.
I think Gary Lutz here both has a point and is completely wrong. I'm getting this down because I want to tuck it away so that I can formulate a comprehensive argument against it later (I just don't have the perspicacity for it now). I will point out that his argument against plots seems to center around a pun.