A Superb And Dreadfully Moving Account Of

Dark Influences From The American Past Congregate Among Us Still. If We Are A Democracy, What Are We To Make Of The Palpable Elements Of Plutocracy, Oligarchy, And Mounting Theocracy That Rule Our State? How Do We Address The Self-inflicted Catastrophes That Devastated Our Natural Environment? So Large Is Our Malaise That No Single Writer Can Encompass It. We Have No Emerson Or Whitman Among Us. An Institutionalized Counterculture Condemns Individuality As Archaic And Depreciates Intellectual Values, Even In The Universities. (the Anatomy Of Influence)

Indeed The Three Prophecies About The Death Of Individual Art Are, In Their Different Ways, Those Of Hegel, Marx, And Freud. I Don't See Any Way Of Getting Beyond Those Prophecies.

There Is A God, And His Name Is Aristophanes.

The Morality Of Scholarship, As Currently Practiced, Is To Encourage Everyone To Replace Difficult Pleasures By Pleasures Universally Accessible Precisely Because They Are Easier.

In The Finest Critics One Hears The Full Cry Of The Human. They Tell One Why It Matters To Read.