We possess the Canon because we are mortal and also rather belated. There is only so much time, and time must have a stop, while t...here is more to read than there ever was before. From the Yahwist and Homer to Freud, Kafka, and Beckett is a journey of nearly three millennia. Since that voyage goes past harbors as infinite as Dante, Chaucer, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy, all of whom amply compensate a lifetime's rereadings, we are in the pragmatic dilemma of excluding something else each time we read or reread extensively.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If someday I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to head them, a cherished entry will be "To abridge, expand, or... otherwise alter or cause to be altered for the sake of belated improvement, one's own writings in translation."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us tha...t we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of thought.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »