Literary Zen XI

There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one’s efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire. *Perhaps a better caption would be, Willem Defoe as Arthur Schopenhauer, which is why I shan’t give up … Read more

Straight On Through*

You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless -there is only one thing to do with a novel [or anything important**] and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing. Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald in a 1929 letter from France, courtesy the New … Read more