To Read In The Service Of Any

There Is No Method Except Yourself.

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.

The World Does Not Get To Be A Better Or A Worse Place; It Just Gets More Senescent.

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.

All That A Critic, As Critic, Can Give Poets Is The Deadly Encouragement That Never Ceases To Remind Them Of How Heavy Their Inheritance Is.