Men of letters at work. —Jacques Barzun, W. H. Auden, and Lionel Trilling.

From Cyril Connolly’s Enemies of Promise. Connolly contemplates the problem of literary survival. How to write a book that is enduring? Or, at least, how to write a book that will last ten years?

RT @DurhamWASP: “My father [Kenneth Clark] was an art historian of the old school, used to the canvasses of Rembrandt and Titian. He simply….

RT @ModAgeJournal: “I believe in a conservativism that is anchored in the best of tradition, not just politically or economically, but arti….

RT @DanaGioiaPoet: Robert Frost was a master of a distinctive category of short poem that has never been given a proper name. https://t.co/….

“Literature is more than what one learns to read in schools and libraries, more even than a grace of life . It is the record of those elusive moments at which life is alone fully itself, fulfilled in consciousness and form.”. —Leslie Fiedler

—William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

“surely there is something in madness, even the demoniac, which Satan flees, aghast at his own handiwork, and which God looks on in pity—some spark, some crumb to leaven and redeem that articulated flesh, that speech sight hearing taste and being which we call human man.”.

Really the best three-hours I’ve spent watching something in a long, long time. Gioia is a cultivated soul remarking on life and lit, a fount of wisdom and delight in an online wilderness of triviality and lunacy. A profoundly edifying experience. Grateful for having watched.

RT @david_perell: Here's the full interview if you want to watch it on YouTube.

“The past never dies. It lives in us and constitutes the surest guide of the conduct of individuals and of people. The soul of the living is above all composed of the thoughts of the dead.”

“Most of us know, now, that Rousseau was wrong: that man, when you knock his chains off, sets up the death camps. Soon we shall know everything the eighteenth century didn't know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us.”. —Randall Jarrell

RT @radical__middle: MY NEW ESSAY ON THE LITERACY CRISIS.

“The jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”. —John Adams

No utter surprise can come to him. Who reaches Shakespeare’s core;.That which we seek and shun is there--. Man’s final lore. —Herman Melville on The Bard

RT @BretVDB: I can’t believe I forgot this book. I love this book. Everybody read this book.

RT @DonPJenn: "While time lasts there will always be a future, and that future will hold both good and evil, since the world is made to tha….

Herman Melville. “Lone Founts”

RT @duncanreyburn: Who is alive (and probably famous) today who will still be discussed in 500 years for their profound and continuous infl….

RT @RobertAllenPoet: Raymond Carver from “Ultramarine”. When I was younger I didn’t like Carver’s poems - I thought they looked like choppe….

RT @PASeay13: Yesterday was the anniversary of Faulkner’s death. The fascinating opening chapter of MY BROTHER BILL by John Faulkner recoun….