When People Leave, They Always Seem To

Some Novelists Are Luckier Than Others In The Eras Of Their Formative Intellectual Years, But All Weltanschauungs Return, Which Means That Most Novelists Have At Least A Chance Of A Revival.

A Reader's Tastes Are Peculiar. Choosing Books To Read Is Like Making Your Way Down A Remote And Winding Path. Your Stops On That Path Are Always Idiosyncratic. One Book Leads To Another And Another The Way One Thought Leads To Another And Another. My Type Of Reader Is The Sort Who Burrows Through The Stacks In The Bookstore Or The Library (or The Web Site — Stacks Are Stacks), Yielding To Impulse And Instinct.

An Urban Novelist Never Minds A Little Decay.

The Novel As A Form Is Usually Seen To Be Moral If Its Readers Consider Freedom, Individuality, Democracy, Privacy, Social Connection, Tolerance And Hope To Be Morally Good, But It Is Not Considered Moral If The Highest Values Of A Society Are Adherence To Rules And Traditional Mores, The Maintenance Of Hierarchical Relationships, And Absolute Ideas Of Right And Wrong. Any Society Based On The Latter Will Find Novels Inherently Immoral And Subversive.

I Discovered That The Horse Is Life Itself, A Metaphor But Also An Example Of Life's Mystery And Unpredictability, Of Life's Generosity And Beauty, A Worthy Object Of Repeated And Ever Changing Contemplation.