That Wine Drinking Is More Effete Than

I Know How Deeply Slothful I Am.

I Know How Many Days In Which I Have Just Answered E-mail, Had Three Phone Calls And A Two Hour Lunch. Poof, Gone. They Are Not Infrequent.

Someone — Cyril Connolly? Ezra Pound? — Once Said That Anything That Can Be Read Twice Is Literature; I Would Say That Anything That Bears Saying Twice Is Quotable.

If Geniuses Can Sometimes Make Mistakes, Cannot The Rest Of Us On Occasion Be Geniuses?

While Reading Writers Of Great Formulatory Power — Henry James, Santayana, Proust — I Find I Can Scarcely Get Through A Page Without Having To Stop To Record Some Lapidary Sentence. Reading Henry James, For Example, I Have Muttered To Myself, "c’mon, Henry, Turn Down The Brilliance A Notch, So I Can Get Some Reading Done." I May Be One Of A Very Small Number Of People Who Have Developed Writer’s Cramp While Reading.