“For too long we have been encouraged to see culture as an affair of intellect, and reading as a solitary exercise. But the truth is different: literature and art are pathways of feeling, and our encounter with them is social, inscribing us in a larger community.... Through art we discover that w...
I have always read those words as a kind of threat: the evil you do will come back to haunt you. Obviously, one can also read this truism in a more angelic fashion: the good we do returns to us. In this light all our deeds, perhaps even our desires, are possessed of a kind of longevity that surpr...