Anyone Can Be Tolerant Of Those Who

Works Of Art Cannot Save Us. They Can Simply Render Us More Sensitive To What Needs To Be Repaired.

Most Students Of Literature Can Pick Apart A Metaphor Or Spot An Ethnic Stereotype, But Not Many Of Them Can Say Things Like: 'the Poem's Sardonic Tone Is Curiously At Odds With Its Plodding Syntax.

Today, Nostalgia Is Almost As Unacceptable As Racism.

Like The Rest Of Us, Tom Paulin Is A Bundle Of Contradictions. At Its Finest, His Work Is Brave, Adventurous, Original And Wonderfully Idiosyncratic.

Readers Are Less And Less Seen As Mere Non-writers, The Subhuman "other" Or Flawed Derivative Of The Author; The Lack Of A Pen Is No Longer A Shameful Mark Of Secondary Status But A Positively Enabling Space, Just As Within Every Writer Can Be Seen To Lurk, As A Repressed But Contaminating Antithesis, A Reader.