Criticism In The Universities, I'll Have To

Indeed The Three Prophecies About The Death Of Individual Art Are, In Their Different Ways, Those Of Hegel, Marx, And Freud. I Don't See Any Way Of Getting Beyond Those Prophecies.

The Idea Of Herman Melville In A Writing Class Is Always Distressing To Me.

A Superb And Dreadfully Moving Account Of The Glory And Subsequent Murder By The Romanians Of The Jewish City In Odessa. . . . Odessa Is Both Celebration And Lament And Equally Impressive As Both.

Reading The Very Best Writers—let Us Say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is Not Going To Make Us Better Citizens. Art Is Perfectly Useless, According To The Sublime Oscar Wilde, Who Was Right About Everything. He Also Told Us That All Bad Poetry Is Sincere. Had I The Power To Do So, I Would Command That These Words Be Engraved Above Every Gate At Every University, So That Each Student Might Ponder The Splendor Of The Insight.

It Is By Extending Oneself, By Exercising Some Capacity Previously Unused That You Come To A Better Knowledge Of Your Own Potential.