I still have not got myself ready to write on James Cahill’s wonderful novel The Violet Hour, though I have started, but today one part of it sticks out as usable in answer to this question. One particularly character in the novel, Fritz Schein represents what the ‘art world’ is increasingly meant to mean for … More When knowledge is reduced to appearance and those appearances animate ‘legends’ so that the experience is ‘epic’, there is no room for a book to ‘read over and over again’.

This is an intriguingly worded question: “What book could you read over and over again?” It’s worth noting that no-one wants to ask about the book you do ‘read over and over again’, just about one of which you could do so and presumably do not do so. In the end it is a question … More The meaning of ‘reading’!