Writing and Reading Inter-Are/2
Johnson made such chains of learned reference in his writing, and his written works are the outgrowth of the kind of reading Johnson did, in which fragments of writing can be distributed under preexisting topics…
Category: Reading
Isn’t This the Truth?
It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, a book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met. —Yoshida Kenkō, Essays in Idleness, translated by…
One to One
Emerson never wrote for groups or classes or institutions; his intended audience was always the single hearer or reader. –Robert Richardson, Emerson: The Mind on Fire, xii
Writing and Reading Inter-Are/1
When a man writes from his own mind, he writes very rapidly. The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library…
Invitations and Incitements
I think it’s best to see Walt, and virtually every other imaginative writer of consequence, as issuing not edicts but invitations. Walt asks us to make his words ours, his vision our own….you can respond…
Reading Jewish
In 1994, I purchased Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, and would peruse it from time to time, and pick a book off of Bloom’s four lists. He got me back to Shakespeare and sparked…
Andrew & Joan
Andrew Ivers continues to guide me when it comes to the delights of the Western Canon. Last week I asked him where I should start with Joan Didion and without hesitation he suggested Slouching towards…
Why Read, Why Write
Books without the knowledge of life are useless…for what should books teach but the art of living? —Dr. Samuel Johnson, A Johnson Sampler, edited by Henry Darcy Curwen, p. 44. The only end of writing…
He Knew His Books
Jesus’ education in the Hebrew Bible is so extraordinary that he is able to quote a wide variety of texts with ease—and to interpret them with great depth. His knowledge of Moses’ Torah in particular…