Real Reading Is A Lonely Activity.

Dark Influences From The American Past Congregate Among Us Still. If We Are A Democracy, What Are We To Make Of The Palpable Elements Of Plutocracy, Oligarchy, And Mounting Theocracy That Rule Our State? How Do We Address The Self-inflicted Catastrophes That Devastated Our Natural Environment? So Large Is Our Malaise That No Single Writer Can Encompass It. We Have No Emerson Or Whitman Among Us. An Institutionalized Counterculture Condemns Individuality As Archaic And Depreciates Intellectual Values, Even In The Universities. (the Anatomy Of Influence)

How To Read "harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone"? Why, Very Quickly, To Begin With, And Perhaps Also To Make An End. Why Read It? Presumably, If You Cannot Be Persuaded To Read Anything Better, Rowling Will Have To Do.

To Read In The Service Of Any Ideology Is Not, In My Judgment, To Read At All.

We Can Be Reluctant To Recognize How Much Of Our Culture Was Literary, Particularly Now That So Many Of The Institutional Purveyors Of Literature Happily Have Joined In Proclaiming Its Death. A Substantial Number Of Americans Who Believe They Worship God Actually Worship Three Major Literary Characters: The Yahweh Of The J Writer (earliest Author Of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers), The Jesus Of The Gospel Of Mark, And Allah Of The Koran.

We Read To Find Ourselves, More Fully And More Strangely Than Otherwise We Could Hope To Find.