Sleep Is When All The Unsorted Stuff

I Have A Confession To Make. The Love Affair Of My Life Has Been With The Greek Language. I Have Now Reached The Age When It Has Occurred To Me That I May Have Read Some Books For The Last Time. I Suddenly Thought That There Are Books I Cannot Bear Not To Read Again Before I Die. One That Stands Out A Mile Is Homer's Iliad.

Consider A Man Riding A Bicycle. Whoever He Is, We Can Say Three Things About Him. We Know He Got On The Bicycle And Started To Move. We Know That At Some Point He Will Stop And Get Off. Most Important Of All, We Know That If At Any Point Between The Beginning And The End Of His Journey He Stops Moving And Does Not Get Off The Bicycle He Will Fall Off It. That Is A Metaphor For The Journey Through Life Of Any Living Thing, And I Think Of Any Society Of Living Things.

When You Take A Child Who's Hollering Like Hell, Sit Him On Your Knee, And Say "once Upon A Time", You Stop Him Hollering. As Long As You Go On Telling Him A Story, He Will Listen. Novelists Who Neglect This Fundamental Effect Do So At Their Peril. They Become What Is Known As The Experimental Novelist, And An Experimental Novel Is Not Really A Novel At All.

They Accepted The Pleasures Of Morning, The Bright Sun, The Whelming Sea And Sweet Air, As A Time When Play Was Good And Life So Full That Hope Was Not Necessary And Therefore Forgotten.

I'm Not A Critic So Much Of My Own Writing. People Must Make Up Their Own Minds Over That.