To Read In The Service

At Our Present Bad Moment, We Need Above All To Recover Our Sense Of Literary Individuality And Of Poetic Autonomy.

What Is Literary Tradition? What Is A Classic? What Is A Canonical View Of Tradition? How Are Canons Of Accepted Classics Formed,and How Are They Unformed? I Think That All These Quite Traditional Questions Can Take One Simplistic But Still Dialectical Question As Their Summing Up: Do We Choose Tradition Or Does It Choose Us, And Why Is It Necessary That A Choosing Take Place, Or A Being Chosen? What Happens If One Tries To Write, Or To Teach, Or To Think, Or Even To Read Without The Sense Of A Tradition? Why, Nothing At All Happens, Just Nothing.

The Art And Passion Of Reading Well And Deeply Is Waning, But [jane] Austen Still Inspires People To Become Fanatical Readers.

Not A Moment Passes These Days Without Fresh Rushes Of Academic Lemmings Off The Cliffs They Proclaim The Political Responsibilities Of The Critic, But Eventually All This Moralizing Will Subside.

Shakespeare Is The True Multicultural Author. He Exists In All Languages. He Is Put On The Stage Everywhere. Everyone Feels That They Are Represented By Him On The Stage.