The Most Beautiful Prose Paragraph Yet Written

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.

Rebecca Mead's My Life In Middlemarch Is A Wise, Humane, And Delightful Study Of What Some Regard As The Best Novel In English. Mead Has Discovered An Original And Highly Personal Way To Make Herself An Inhabitant Both Of The Book And Of George Eliot's Imaginary City. Though I Have Read And Taught The Book These Many Years I Find Myself Desiring To Go Back To It After Reading Rebecca Mead's Work.

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 Art And Passion Of Reading Well And Deeply Is Waning, But [jane] Austen Still Inspires People To Become Fanatical Readers.

I Think Freud Is About Contamination, But I Think That Is Something He Learned From Shakespeare, Because Shakespeare Is About Nothing But Contamination, You Might Say.