Personality, In Our Sense, Is A Shakespearean

The Idea Of Herman Melville In A Writing Class Is Always Distressing To Me.

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

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.

Shakespeare Will Not Make Us Better, And He Will Not Make Us Worse, But He May Teach Us How To Overhear Ourselves When We Talk To Ourselves... He May Teach Us How To Accept Change In Ourselves As In Others, And Perhaps Even The Final Form Of Change.

We Can Be Reluctant To Recognize How Much Of Our Culture Was Literary, Particularly Now That So Many Of The Institutional Purveyors Of Literature Happily Have Joined In Proclaiming Its Death. A Substantial Number Of Americans Who Believe They Worship God Actually Worship Three Major Literary Characters: The Yahweh Of The J Writer (earliest Author Of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers), The Jesus Of The Gospel Of Mark, And Allah Of The Koran.