There Is No Method Except

We Read, Frequently If Not Unknowingly, In Search Of A Mind More Original Than Our Own.

I Don't Believe In Myths Of Decline Or Myths Of Progress, Even As Regards The Literary Scene.

I Have Read All Of Daniel Aaron's Books, And Admired Them, But In The Americanist I Believe He Has Composed An Intellectual And Social Memoir For Which He Will Be Remembered. His Self-portrait Is Marked By Personal Tact And Admirable Restraint: He Is And Is Not Its Subject. The Americanist Is A Vision Of Otherness: Literary And Academic Friends And Acquaintances, Here And Abroad. Eloquently Phrased And Free Of Nostalgia, It Catches A Lost World That Yet Engendered Much Of Our Own.

The True Use Of Shakespeare Or Of Cervantes, Of Homer Or Of Dante, Of Chaucer Or Of Rabelais, Is To Augment One's Own Growing Inner Self. . . . The Mind's Dialogue With Itself Is Not Primarily A Social Reality. All That The Western Canon Can Bring One Is The Proper Use Of One's Own Solitude, That Solitude Whose Final Form Is One's Confrontation With One's Own Mortality.

A Superb And Dreadfully Moving Account Of The Glory And Subsequent Murder By The Romanians Of The Jewish City In Odessa. . . . Odessa Is Both Celebration And Lament And Equally Impressive As Both.