Stage plays, no matter how well done, always remain faintly ridiculous.
Feb 072023
Seeming
Religion, art, taste, and other delusions.
Jan 202023
The knottiest problem in contemporary etiquette is what to say about your friend’s bad art.
Jan 192023
Some of what you say should not sound like something you would say.
Jan 062023
Poetry and music continuously raise expectations in the listener. What is too conventional caters to them exactly; what is too unconventional does not cater to them at all.
Dec 302022
The life to be mined from art is not the artist’s but one’s own.
Dec 052022
Always consume your friends’ favorite art. It might be good, and if it isn’t, you can absorb yourself endlessly in wondering why they like it.
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.
Nov 082022
Almost anything can be put into a work of art, which is the artist’s problem, and almost anything can be got out of it, which is the critic’s.
Oct 182022
To portray competence in detail requires a genius; to portray genius in detail requires a god.
Oct 072022
A story of only exciting parts is like a wardrobe of only exciting garments.