The reader properly resents coincidence. Life does not arrange itself to suit him; why should it arrange itself to suit the author?
Feb 122015
Reading
The dead alive and busy.
—Vaughan
Jan 122015
No one wants realism in fiction — only a bit of reality tinsel to decorate the old myths.
Dec 022014
Readers fall in love with villains because authors do.
Dec 012014
Scholarship
Magisterial: Pompous
Brilliant: Unreliable
Valuable: Trivial
Eccentric: Deranged
Classic: Dull
Formidable: Duller
Encyclopedic: Stupefying
Sep 182014
To read well you have to live a little.
Aug 192014
The reader will often reject, when it is explained and argued for, what he would swallow if it were stated baldly and unadorned.
Aug 012014
Write in the margin as you would speak to the author.
Apr 302014
News is noise.
Apr 282014
We say of indelible characters from life that they could be fictional; and from books, that they could be real.
Apr 172014
In fiction we admire energy, not virtue. We root for the life-force, however it manifests.