Like Most-maybe All- Writers, I Learned To

But If I Were Asked To Pick One Constant, One Quality That Seems Dependable, Immutable, Endlessly Available, I'd Say That It Was Intensity. For Nothing In Sicily Seems Withheld, Done Half Way, Restrained Or Suppressed. There's Nothing To Correspond To Say, The Ironic, The Cerebral Remove At Which A Frenchman Might Consider An Idea Or A Question, Or The Scandinavian Distrust Of The Sloppy, Emotive Response.

With This Recitation Of Paraphernalia And Detritus, O'brien Manages To Encapsulate The Experience Of An Army And Of A Particular War, Of A Mined And Booby-trapped Landscape, Of Cold Nights And Hot Days, Of Soaking Monsoons And Rice Paddies, And Of The Possibility Of Being Shot, Like Ted Lavender, Suddenly And Out Of Nowhere: Not Only In The Middle Of A Sentence But In The Midst Of A Subordinate Clause.

Reading Was Like Eating Alone, With That Same Element Of Bingeing.

I’ve Always Found That The Better The Book I’m Reading, The Smarter I Feel, Or, At Least, The More Able I Am To Imagine That I Might, Someday, Become Smarter.

'one Hundred Years Of Solitude' Convinced Me To Drop Out Of Harvard Graduate School. The Novel Reminded Me Of Everything My Ph.d. Program Was Trying To Make Me Forget. Thank You, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.