If The Word Has The

The Blues Is An Art Of Ambiguity, An Assertion Of The Irrepressibly Human Over All Circumstances, Whether Created By Others Or By One's Own Human Failing.

Every Serious Novel Is, Beyond Its Immediate Thematic Preoccupations, A Discussion Of The Craft, A Conquest Of The Form, A Conflict With Its Difficulties And A Pursuit Of Its Felicities And Beauty.

America Is Woven Of Many Strands. I Would Recognise Them And Let It So Remain. Our Fate Is To Become One, And Yet Many. This Is Not Prophecy, But Description.

I Suddenly Recall The Arpeggios Of Laughter Lilting Across The Tender, Springtime Grass-gay-welling, Far-floating, Fluent, Spontaneous, A Bell-like Feminine Fluting, Then Suppressed; As Though Snuffed Swiftly And Irrevocably Beneath The Quiet Solemnity Of The Vespered Air Now Vibrant With Somber Chapel Bells.

If Social Protest Is Antithetical To Art, What Then Shall We Make Of Goya, Dickens, And Twain?