To Be A Poet Did Not Occur

Criticism In The Universities, I'll Have To Admit, Has Entered A Phase Where I Am Totally Out Of Sympathy With 95% Of What Goes On. It's Stalinism Without Stalin.

Hamlet, Kierkegaard, Kafka Are Ironists In The Wake Of Jesus. All Western Irony Is A Repetition Of Jesus' Enigmas/riddles, In Amalgam With The Ironies Of Socrates.

We Read Deeply For Varied Reasons, Most Of Them Familiar: That We Cannot Know Enough People Profoundly Enough; That We Need To Know Ourselves Better; That We Require Knowledge, Not Just Of Self And Others, But Of The Way Things Are. Yet The Strongest, Most Authentic Motive For Deep Reading…is The Search For A Difficult Pleasure.

Everyone Wants A Prodigy To Fail; It Makes Our Mediocrity More Bearable.

Reading Well Makes Children More Interesting Both To Themselves And Others, A Process In Which They Will Develop A Sense Of Being Separate And Distinct Selves.