He Had A Better Mind And A

A Couple's First Task, It Has Always Seemed To Me, Is To Solve The Problem Of Breakfast; If This Can Be Worked Out Amicably, Most Other Difficulties Can Too.

We Live With Such Easy Assumptions, Don't We? For Instance, That Memory Equals Events Plus Time. But It's All Much Odder Than This. Who Was It Said That Memory Is What We Thought We'd Forgotten? And It Ought To Be Obvious To Us That Time Doesn't Act As A Fixative, Rather As A Solvent. But It's Not Convenient--- It's Not Useful--- To Believe This; It Doesn't Help Us Get On With Our Lives; So We Ignore It.

It Took Me Some Years To Clear My Head Of What Paris Wanted Me To Admire About It, And To Notice What I Preferred Instead. Not Power-ridden Monuments, But Individual Buildings Which Tell A Quieter Story: The Artist's Studio, Or The Belle Epoque House Built By A Forgotten Financier For A Just-remembered Courtesan.

Great Books Are Readable Anyway. Dickens Is Readable. Jane Austen Is Readable. John Updike's Readable. Hawthorne's Readable. It's A Meaningless Term. You Have To Go The Very Extremes Of Literature, Like Joyce's "finnegan's Wake," Before You Get A Literary Work That Literally Unreadable.

Pride Makes Us Long For A Solution To Things – A Solution, A Purpose, A Final Cause; But The Better Telescopes Become, The More Stars Appear.