Irony - The Modern Mode: Either The

Life Seemed Even More Of A Guessing Game Than Usual.

Does Character Develop Over Time? In Novels, Of Course It Does: Otherwise There Wouldn't Be Much Of A Story. But In Life? I Sometimes Wonder. Our Attitudes And Opinions Change, We Develop New Habits And Eccentricities; But That's Something Different, More Like Decoration. Perhaps Character Resembles Intelligence, Except That Character Peaks A Little Later: Between Twenty And Thirty, Say. And After That, We're Just Stuck With What We've Got. We're On Our Own. If So, That Would Explain A Lot Of Lives, Wouldn't It? And Also - If This Isn't Too Grand A Word - Our Tragedy.

You Put Together Two People Who Have Not Been Put Together Before; And Sometimes The World Is Changed, Sometimes Not. They May Crash And Burn, Or Burn And Crash. But Sometimes, Something New Is Made, And Then The World Is Changed. Together, In That First Exaltation, That First Roaring Sense Of Uplift, They Are Greater Than Their Two Separate Selves. Together, They See Further, And They See More Clearly.

I Am Death-fearing. I Don't Think I'm Morbid. That Seems To Me A Fear Of Death That Goes Beyond The Rational. Whereas It Seems To Me To Be Entirely Rational To Fear Death!

Reading And Life Are Not Separate But Symbiotic. And For This Serious Task Of Imaginative Discovery And Self-discovery, There Is And Remains One Perfect Symbol: The Printed Book.