"The Polysyllabic Spree"

[fiefoe]

Nick Hornby is firmly in the populist camp. Borrowing Tom Shone ("Blockbuster")'s metaphor, he advices having both the shark part and the finger-steepling part. His dig at the current state of affairs: The lesson of literature over the last eight-odd years is the old math teacher's admonishment: "SHOW YOUR WORKINGS!" Otherwise, how is anyone to know that there are any? In the middle of discussing Bobby Fischer: Contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century.

In the same spirit, he can also be a shameless flatterer: I don't know why, but I always think of you (reader) lot knowing everything, pretty much, apart from the rules of cricket.

•  David Copperfield is Dickens's Hamlet. Hamlet is a play full of famous quotes; Copperfield is a novel full of famous characters.
• (Finding out the son of Charles Dickens's mistress died during his lifetime): it's weird to think how... centuries can be eaten up like that.
  
• (On Father and Son): Darwin's theories were more devastating for the evangelical naturalist than for just about anyone else in the country.
  
• The truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more. [Zaid]
• The entire vegetable world was ineffably droll. [ Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, P Hamilton]
  
• What is called Taste is only another name for fact. [ the utilitarian school inspector in Hard Times]
• Reason not the need. [King Lear]