Writing Is A Performance, Like Singing An

A Comparably Capacious Embrace Of Beauty And Pleasure - An Embrace That Somehow Extends To Death As Well As Life, To Dissolution As Well As Creation - Characterizes Montaigne's Restless Reflections On Matter In Motion, Cervantes's Chronicle Of His Mad Knight, Michelangelo's Depiction Of Flayed Skin, Leonardo's Sketches Of Whirlpools, Caravaggio's Loving Attention To The Dirty Soles Of Christ's Feet.

Now A Protestant Confronting A Catholic Ghost Is Exactly Shakespeare's Way Of Grappling With What Was Not Simply A General Social Problem But One Lived Out In His Own Life.

When I Was Quite Young I Came Across A Collection Of [franz] Kafka Stories And Read "the Judgment." I Was Just Floored By That Story. I Couldn't Understand It. I Still Don't. I'm Talking About Something I Read More Than 50 Years Ago. That Story Left A Little Scar On Me.

The First And Perhaps The Most Important Requirement For A Successful Writing Performance - And Writing Is A Performance, Like Singing An Aria Or Dancing A Jig - Is To Understand The Nature Of The Occasion.

I'm Reading Hans Kummer's "in Quest Of The Sacred Baboon." It's Wonderful. It's A Scientist's Journal About Baboons, But It Relates To The Search For Human Origin.