Escapism Has Value, Even If

When I Was 35 I Realized That I Was Still Thinking A Lot About What It Would Be Like To Go To Narnia. To Really Go - Not Just In A Daydream, Or In A Children's Book, But What It Would Actually Feel Like, Physically, Psychologically, Every Other Way. The Idea Was Haunting Me.

A Magician Is Strong Because He Feels The Pain Between What The World Is And What He Would Make Of It.

The Paradox Of The English Country House Is That Its State Of Permanent Decline, The Fact That Its Heyday Is Always Behind It, Is Part Of The Seduction, Just As It Is Part Of The Seduction Of Books In General.

I'm Now Much More Excited About Genre Distinctions. What I Still See Breaking Down Are More The Hierarchical Arrangements Of Genres. That Is, "there Is Literary Fiction, And Then There Are Lesser Genres." I'm Much More Clear On The Idea That Literary Fiction Is Itself A Genre. It Is Not Above Other Genres. It Is Down There In The Muck With All The Other Genres, And It's Doing The Wonderful Things That It Does, But To Give It A Y-axis, To Make It High And Low, Just Seems Absurd. I Stand By That.

The New Web Is A Very Different Thing. It's A Tool For Bringing Together The Small Contributions Of Millions Of People And Making Them Matter. Silicon Valley Consultants Call It Web 2.0, As If It Were A New Version Of Some Old Software. But It's Really A Revolution.