Mostly I blame T. S. Eliot, though he’s not the only one. There’s Charles Dickens and James Baldwin, too. I could come up with lots more culprits, but there’s no need. The effect is the same. These are some of the writers whose work most inspires me. Yet the same extraordinary talents that produced The … Continue reading The Anxiety of Influence and Getting Over Yourself
Graduate school gave me mixed signals about intelligence. Every now and then I try to sort them out. Thirty-five years after I earned my master’s degree from the University of Virginia, the nature of my own intellect remains unclear to me. For a long time, I wondered just what kind of "intelligent" I might be—and … Continue reading An Unbearable Brightness of Being
This post is about T. S. Eliot, not about killing helpless marsupials. So don’t say I didn’t warn you. On a recent night-time walk in the Bloomsbury district of London, my wife and I came across the original location of Faber & Faber, the publishing outfit where T. S. Eliot worked for 40 years. Outside … Continue reading Murdering Old Possum
