Americans' Great And Secret Fear

Going To Europe, Someone Had Written, Was About As Final As Going To Heaven. A Mystical Passage To Another Life, From Which No-one Returned The Same. Those Returning In Such Ships Were Invincible, For They Had Managed It And Could Reflect Ever After On Anne Hathaway's Cottage Or The Tower Of London With A Confidence That Did Generate At Sydney. There Was Nothing Mythic At Sydney; Momentous Objects, Beings And Events All Occurred Abroad Or In The Elsewhere Of Books.

The Sweetness That All Longed For Night And Day. Some Tragedy Might Be Idly Guessed At-loss Or Illness. She Had The Luminosity Of Those About To Die.

Italians Are Never Punctual; The Café, The Convenient Place To Wait, Absolves Them From That. There Is No Question Of Hanging About, No Looking Lost And Unwanted Or Even Disreputable, As There Is In Hotel Lobbies Or The Foyers Of Restaurants. One Just Sits And Enjoys The Scene, And Waits.

It Is The Impulse Of Our Century, With Its Nearly Religious Belief In Magnitude, To Fling An Institution Into Every Void.

I Think That One Is Constantly Startled By The Things That Appear Before You On The Page When You're Writing.