A primary source, in translation, is a secondary source.
Nov 112022
Reading
The dead alive and busy.
—Vaughan
Nov 102022
Children’s literature posits a compact between author and reader: though the reader may look like a frog to all the uncaring world, the author knows he is a handsome prince, and it can be their little secret. Harry Potter is children’s literature. So is Confederacy of Dunces.
Oct 272022
What is worth reading is worth reading esoterically.
Oct 192022
One must read widely to discover the few books to read deeply.
Sep 222022
When everyone writes, no one reads.
Aug 222022
The academic bibliography buries the ten books the author has plagiarized among hundreds that he has barely read.
Aug 052022
I always inspect what people read in public, but guiltily, the way boys look up skirts from under the bleachers.
Apr 082022
The desires to have one’s work understood, and oneself understood, are nearly opposite, and ought not to share a verb.
Feb 282022
We have always believed what we read, and now we can read what we believe.
Feb 072022
A few books, like Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson and certain novels by Wodehouse, are unglossable, complete and perfect in themselves. They may succeed with the public but never with the critics, who before them feel their own irrelevance too acutely.