The North-south Line Of 'the Mountains,' Meaning

The Mythical America?that Marvellous, Heroic, Sentimental Landwas An Object Of Faith. It Challenged You To Make The Believer's Leap Over The Rude Facts At Your Feet.

Insofar As I Think About Postmodernism At All, And It Doesn't Exactly Keep Me Awake At Nights, I Think Of It As Something That Happens To One, Not A Style One Affects. We're Postmoderns Because We're Not Modernists. The Modernist Writers—pound, Eliot, Joyce, Stevens, Yeats, Woolf, Williams—spoke With A Kind Of Vatic Authority: They Were Really The Last Of The Romantics, For Whom Authorship Itself Was Like Being A Solitary Prophet In The Wasteland.

Sociology And Anthropology Are Not Disciplines Which Take Easily To Situations Where People Are Able To Live Out Their Fantasies, Not Just In The Symbolic Action Of Ritual, But In The Concrete Theater Of Society At Large.

No President Has Come Near To Rivaling Lincoln As A Writer.

When New Yorkers Tell One About The Dangers Of Their City, The Muggings, The Dinner Parties To Which No One Turns Up For Fear Of Being Attacked On The Way, The Traffic Snarl-ups, The Bland Indifference Of The City Cops, They Are Unmistakably Bragging.