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- From The Recognitions by William Gaddis: “What’s any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What’s left of the man when the work’s done but a shambles of apology.”
- People should go back to reading novels aloud. It would be good for people and even better for the novels.
- Patience is the capacity to think about one’s thoughts long enough to think about the consequences of those thoughts.
- Romanticism is important. We are still in the romantic age — the late late late romantic age (the age of Goethe and Holderlin; Shelley and Byron); whether we know it or not. Romanticism, stripped to its roots, is the cry of the imagination against its incorporation into the machinery of biopower. It is no accident that romanticism coincides with the rise of the consolidated nation-state; the evolution and spread of capitalism.
- Another historical insight: we exaggerate the horror the middle ages so as to increase our own confidence in the pleasures of liquid modernity/hyper-capitalism. The middle ages had their horrors — as all ages do — but the record of medieval art, poetry, and song tells a different story: harmony, joy, ecstasy. Of course, the recovery of the middle ages is vital to romantic thinking.
- Modern literature is romantic literature after it has realized that the imagination won’t and can’t change the direction the world unless it revolutionizes its form and style.
- Post-modern literature is romantic literature after it has realized that — aesthetic revolution or not — the…
