Louis Menand's The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War is a glossary of human existence for those who care about things like Clement Greenberg and the advent of abstract expressionism, Lionel Trilling's relationship to Allen Ginsburg and Ginsberg's relationship to Rimbaud and the provenance of Trilling's essay, Sincerity and Authenticity. Caveat emptor if you are not interested in how the value of criticism lies in the creation of sensibility or how one's appreciation and discrimination, one's taste, ultimately both determines and reflects how one feels about life (a la Trilling's The Liberal Imagination). Bonus non-sequitur.The pain of life does not necessarily make for greatness. For instance alcoholic writers like James Agee become great despite the drinking. One can't but wonder what path(s) they might have taken or heights ascended were they to have given up the bottle.
read An Incident of Defenestration by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn
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