Ruefulness Is One Of The Classical Tones

Travel Is Like Adultery: One Is Always Tempted To Be Unfaithful To One's Own Country. To Have Imagination Is Inevitably To Be Dissatisfied With Where You Live. There Is In Men, As Peter Quennell Said, "a Centrifugal Tendency." In Our Wanderlust, We Are Lovers Looking For Consummation.

Ruefulness Is One Of The Classical Tones Of American Fiction. It Fosters A Native, Deglamorized Form Of Anxiety.

Chic Is A Convent For Unloved Women.

The Contents Of Someone's Bookcase Are Part Of His History, Like An Ancestral Portrait.

The Epic Implications Of Being Human End In More Than This: We Start Our Lives As If They Were Momentous Stories, With A Beginning, A Middle And An Appropriate End, Only To Find That They Are Mostly Middles.