Everyone Is Necessarily The Hero Of His

Printed Prose Is Historically A Most Peculiar, Almost An Aberrant Way Of Telling Stories, And By Far The Most Inherently Anesthetic: It Is The Only Medium Of Art I Can Think Of Which Appeals Directly To None Of Our Five Senses. The Oral And Folk Tradition In Narrative Made Use Of Verse Or Live-voice Dynamics, Embellished By Gesture And Expression--a Kind Of Rudimentary Theater--as Do The Best Raconteurs Of All Times. Commonly There Was Musical Accompaniment As Well: A Kind Of One-man Theater-of-mixed-means.

One Of The Things I Miss About Teaching Is That Students Would Tell Me What I Ought To Read. One Of My Students, Back In The 1960s, Put Me Onto Borges, And I Remember Another Mentioning Flann O'brien's At Swim Two-birds In The Same Way.

I Don't See How Anybody Starts A Novel Without Knowing How It's Going To End. I Usually Make Detailed Outlines: How Many Chapters It Will Be And So Forth.

Nobody Knew How To Be What They Were Right.

It Is Often Pleasant To Stone A Martyr, No Matter How Much We May Admire Him.