The Year of Magical Thinking

Chaucer’s Knight As Stoic Philosopher

In How to Read and Why (Scribner, New York, 2001, p. 281), Harold Bloom invokes ‘The Knight’s Tale‘ from Chaucer‘s Canterbury Tales and writes: The Knight sums up Chaucer’s ironic ethos in one grim couplet: It is ful fair a man to bere hym evene For al day meeteth men at unset stevene Bloom continues:Continue reading “Chaucer’s Knight As Stoic Philosopher”

Paying Attention To The Muses’ Visits

In The Year of Magical Thinking–a book on which I will write a bit more anon–Joan Didion quotes her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, as saying that having a notebook handy–to write down a thought, an idea, filed away for future reference and deployment–was the difference between being able to write and not. There is muchContinue reading “Paying Attention To The Muses’ Visits”