I'm a pluralist about perspectives on literature. There seem to me to be all sorts of illuminating ways of responding to major literary works, some of them paying considerable attention to context, others applying various theoretical ideas, yet others focusing on details of language, or linking the work to the author's life, or connecting it with other works.

I would like to undermine the stereotype of "strict philosophy." J.L. Austin remarked that, when philosophy is done well, it's all over by the bottom of the first page. I take him to have meant that the real work comes in setting up the problem with which you are dealing, and thus getting your reader to take particular things for granted.

In my view, all students should be given an initial opportunity to pursue the science track as far as it goes. But for those who quickly decide that track isn't for them, a different style of teaching is in order.

There are many critics whose work I greatly admire. Even though I diverge from T.J. Reed in several important ways, I've learned greatly from his writings on Mann.

Was Mann himself fully aware of all the facets of his irony? Probably not - any more than Shakespeare was fully aware of all the riches subsequent critics have found in his plays.

I think the tone of mockery Heller finds is a part of Mann's irony, but only a part - a brilliant further touch consists in juxtaposing perspectives so that we're led to wonder whether the mockery itself is the last word.

I'm quite pessimistic about climate change. This is an urgent problem, and much of the world is only now waking up to the easiest part of solving - the realization that anthropogenic global warming is real.