All The Things We Value

You See Tragedy Requires Persons Of Heroic Stature. It Works On The Principle Of People Being More Than Humansuper-humanand Also Being Only Too Human. But There Just Aren't Many Great Figures Around Now, So The Tragic Mechanisms Can't Work.

Egotism Exists Everywhere, But It Has A Different Flavor In England, Where The Tabloid Culture Goes Much Deeper. It's Just The Indulgence Of Vulgarity, The Wallowing In Vulgarity. As With Everything English, There's A Sort Of Irony To It. They Write A Great Deal About These Trivial People Who Have A Certain Eminence, Always With A Bit Of, "isn't It Ridiculous That We Are Writing About This Person?"

People? People Are Chaotic Quiddities Living In One Cave Each. They Pass The Hours In Amorous Grudge And Playback And Thought Experiment. At The Campfire They Put The Usual Fraction On Exhibit, And Listen To Their Own Silent Gibber About How They're Feeling And How They're Going Down. We've Been There. Death Helps. Death Gives Us Something To Do. Because It's A Fulltime Job Looking The Other Way.

The Children Of The Nuclear Age, I Think, Were Weakened In Their Capacity To Love. Hard To Love, When You're Bracing Yourself For Impact. Hard To Love, When The Loved One, And The Lover, Might At Any Instant Become Blood And Flames, Along With Everybody Else.

When We Read, We Are Doing More Than Delectating Words On A Page Stories, Characters, Images, Notions. We Are Communing With The Mind Of The Author.