Not really a criticism, just that I think both positions (an opposition which electrifies against stupor, a stupor that grows so mesmerising as to liberate) deserve further consideration

It is kind of an arc where literature was thought of as one science or branch of knowledge among others, all undetermined elaborations of objects, then lesser or determined, then greater or determining, and finally one determined among others relating to a material base. For 20th c. specifically.

Also I wonder how people read Malick's softening of the Gere character. He doesn't seem quite the neuroses-ridden, impotent guy that I think you'd expect from the part, there's a bit of boyish naivety about his scheming and a nobility and innocence that isn't really pierced.

I've had stuck in my mind for years this blurb of a Henry James book that exclaimed about his going to something like 170 dinner parties one year, as if it was a kind of scandalous or impossible thing to know about an artist.

These are my thoughts from reading David Melnick at 2 in the morning while I couldn’t sleep