Sunday, August 23, 2009

Richard Poirier - A Man of Good Reading - NYTimes.com

Richard Poirier - A Man of Good Reading - NYTimes.com:

Rest in peace, Richard Poirier. A great literary critic!

Consider this quote as an indicator of how one should read Scripture as a literary genre, as both immediately beautiful, and yet increasingly strange and imponderable. "Mr. Poirier’s most important contribution came in his criticism, which tried to convey why the act of reading is — and should be — so difficult. The most powerful works of literature, he insisted, offer “a fairly direct access to pleasure” but become “on longer acquaintance, rather strange and imponderable.” Even as readers try to pin down what a writer means, the best authors try to elude them, using all the resources of sound, rhythm and syntax to defeat any straightforward account of what they are doing."

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