October 1, 1987
The Aesthetics of John Cage: A Composite Interview
I I said earlier that I was more interested in a mediocre thing that is being made now, which is avant-garde, than I am in the performance of a great […]
July 1, 1987
Teaching Homer in the Shadow of Troy
Lying there half asleep in the brightly lit cabin, I was startled by the muffled announcement over the loudspeaker in the ship’s passageway. “Kalymnos,” it called. “Passengers for Kalymnos please […]
January 1, 1987
Influence without Anxiety: Sir Charles G. D. Roberts: And Me
I’m afraid to start rereading Roberts now, lest my topic slip through my fingers. A dozen years ago I was searching for a birthday present for a twelve-year-old boy. I […]
October 1, 1986
A Pastoral Occasion
We at last decided to make an end to things, and put Jacob down. You put an old dog down to abbreviate his suffering, or free yourself of his inconvenience. […]
April 1, 1986
The Fate of Rereading
We take what we need from the books we read, and what we need changes. The meaning of a book should be located less in an achieved interpretation than in […]
January 1, 1986
The Defeated Generation
Is some kind of affirmation implicit in any creating? I believe so. And I believe the history of western art from the Renaissance to the present could be recounted in […]
October 1, 1985
Sir William Empson (1906-1984): A Memoir
From the rosy brick of the small first court at Magdalene College, Cambridge, a door surmounted with the arms of the founder and the motto Garde Ta Foy leads to […]
April 1, 1985
Upstairs
Although I grew up in Nashville and my parents still live in our old house, I don’t visit much now. Eastern Connecticut is a long way from middle Tennessee, almost […]
January 1, 1985
My Legacy
For many years my father was a communist, an atheist, and a great intellectual. When other boys my age were being slipped crisp five dollar bills for bar mitzvah presents, […]
October 1, 1984
The Habitations of the Word
Plato’s Phaedrus has seemed to some critics to have too many subjects; to be drawn first in this direction and then in that, as if those uncooperative horses which it […]
July 1, 1984
The Parts of Speech
“. . . . I tell myself that a healthy imagination is like a healthy appetite and must be fed. If you do not feed it the lives of your […]
April 1, 1984
Fuller
1 She worked with burnt hands. Burnt, in a way, from the inside out. The tips were fine-cracked like old paintings. And she’d been working today, again, from even before […]