By reading we discover our world, our history, and ourselves.

As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America, has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves.

By reading we discover our world, our history, and ourselves.

But rather that we should lose our sense that neither can become the other, that the traditional novel form continues to enlarge our experience in those very areas where the wide-angle lense and the Cinerama screen tend to narrow it.

As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.

God is the celebrity author of the world's best seller. We have made god into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness.

The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the media.