Television host Johnny Carson once challenged a guest to speak for five minutes without using "I." He and his guest sat in silence for what seemed like a long time (since it was TV, it was probably not more than 30 seconds) and then burst out laughing.
During a lecture many years ago, Donald Hall advised his students to look down a page of their prose and rewrite any paragraph that began with "I."
The other night during the KGB bar reading, Star Black told her audience that she banned "I" from her work for five years.
Later, while introducing Mark Ford, David Lehman shared that while working for Newsweek, he wrote something like 125 articles without using "I."
For starters, let's all take the Johnny Carson challenge and see what happens.
-- sdh
