| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: for it, and I scarcely knew how to account for it. To me Mr.
Jamieson was far less formidable under my eyes where I knew what
he was doing, than he was of in the city, twisting circumstances
and motives to suit himself and learning what he wished to know,
about events at Sunnyside, in some occult way. I was glad enough
to have him there, when excitements began to come thick and fast.
A new element was about to enter into affairs: Monday, or Tuesday
at the latest, would find Doctor Walker back in his green and
white house in the village, and Louise's attitude to him in the
immediate future would signify Halsey's happiness or
wretchedness, as it might turn out. Then, too, the return
The Circular Staircase |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: but a good broad span of years, something that really counts as
real service--is not, upon the whole, a good equipment for a
writing life. God forbid, though, that I should be thought of as
denying my masters of the quarter-deck. I am not capable of that
sort of apostasy. I have confessed my attitude of piety towards
their shades in three or four tales, and if any man on earth more
than another needs to be true to himself as he hopes to be saved,
it is certainly the writer of fiction.
What I meant to say, simply, is that the quarter-deck training
does not prepare one sufficiently for the reception of literary
criticism. Only that, and no more. But this defect is not
Some Reminiscences |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Statesman by Plato: ...
The principal subjects in the Statesman may be conveniently embraced under
six or seven heads:--(1) the myth; (2) the dialectical interest; (3) the
political aspects of the dialogue; (4) the satirical and paradoxical vein;
(5) the necessary imperfection of law; (6) the relation of the work to the
other writings of Plato; lastly (7), we may briefly consider the
genuineness of the Sophist and Statesman, which can hardly be assumed
without proof, since the two dialogues have been questioned by three such
eminent Platonic scholars as Socher, Schaarschmidt, and Ueberweg.
I. The hand of the master is clearly visible in the myth. First in the
connection with mythology;--he wins a kind of verisimilitude for this as
Statesman |
