Soup--English majors--Great authors--Collaboration

Before I lost all my files, I was writing a story about soup. What can be said about soup? Well, it wasn't really about soup. The act of making this soup was the only thing that tied the narrative together, the only thing that would make the only character's musings seem coherent and believable. I later realized that in using a gimmick to hook the reader, I was helping contribute to the notion that a narrative is necessary. Maybe people are tired of associative leaps going on to nowhere. I'll admit it's hard to know when you're finished. But we're never finished. I had an acrimonious debate with some English majors a couple of months ago about just this. They maintained that Hemingway (for example) could make no changes to his a works, to which I said something that was euphemistic for "bullshit". I also didn't like the way they idolized these authors; I find much to commend, but I will not get down on bended knee to them, no matter how much more accomplished than me, no matter the quality of their gleaming prose, no matter the illumination that their life experience brings to the backs of their heads. That being said, I have surprisingly little bile to fling at them.

Thought for the day (actually, for the post): "take 10,000 people. Ask them to write a symphony (or am opera, or a rock-opera, or whatever). When all the egotists have submitted their earth-shaking ideas and the diplomats have synthesized the hell out of them and the misanthropes in the corners have fallen asleep, and the vast majority have voted on the finest course of action and the unruly have been expelled and marginalized, what will develop?"