If There's One Thing I Can't Stand,

The Novel Doesn't Come Into Existence Until Certain Methods Of Reproducing Fiction Come Along.

To Be An American (unlike Being English Or French Or Whatever) Is Precisely To Imagine A Destiny Rather Than To Inherit One; Since We Have Always Been, Insofar As We Are Americans At All, Inhabitants Of Myth Rather Than History.

Anybody In The Next Centuries Wanting To Know What It Was Like To Be A Poet In The Middle Of The 20th Century Should Read Kaddish.

Cooper Wrote A Novel Which Is Absolutely Indistinguishable From Austen, Completely From A Female Point Of View, Completely English, No Sense That He Was An American.

Delillo Never Seems Committed To Me To What He Is Writing. Very Nice Surfaces, But He's Got Nothing Underneath.