« My talk asks the question: how is artaud valuable now--not as a theorist of the theater and not as an exotic voice (because of his madness) but as a writer, a stylist. I first learned of him when i was studying theater in college--long before I, like artaud, spent a little time in the psychiatric hospital. I have known all of his popular guises, therefore, but it seems to me now that he is much more than these things; he is an artist of metaphor, and in particular he is an artist of the biological metaphor. he writes psychology and philosophy on the body, and this metaphoricall skill seems lasting to me, and of great value to a writer like me, who writes, primarily, novels. » Rick Moody