Criticism Starts - It Has To Start

I Am Not Unique In My Elegiac Sadness At Watching Reading Die, In The Era That Celebrates Stephen King And J.k. Rowling Rather Than Charles Dickens And Lewis Carroll.

We Read Not Only Because We Cannot Know Enough People, But Because Friendship Is So Vulnerable, So Likely To Diminish Or Disappear, Overcome By Space, Time, Imperfect Sympathies, And All The Sorrows Of Familial And Passional Life.

...the Bible Itself Is Less Read Than Preached, Less Interpreted Than Brandished. Increasingly, Pastors May Drape A Limply Bound Book Over The Edges Of The Pulpit As They Depart From It. Members Of The Congregation Carry Bibles To Church Services; The Paster Announces A Long Passage Text For His Sermon And Waits For People To Find It, Then Reads Only The First Verse Of It Before He Takes Off. The Book Has Become A Talisman.

The Very Best Of All Merwin: I Have Been Reading William Since 1952, And Always With Joy.

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.