“Our thoughts on other people’s works are also creations. Commenting can be just as much of an art form as poetry is...”

I loved reading all of this, but his sentence in particular was a breath of fresh air. I feel out of place in a lot of ways, because my favorite reading to relax with on a Sunday morning is a literary review mag. I love a Literary Critic who makes the effort to turn their review into something that can stand up on its own, equally, next to the work it’s reviewing.

This is also probably why being such a big Lionel Trilling fan is a lonely, lonely existence.