I didn’t have an easy go in advanced academia and this was down to two things - my sloth and what I came to regard as that world’s maddening opacity. Literary critics Harold Bloom and Ludwig Wittgenstein pained me greatly, but Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare not nearly as much. Try though I might, academic writing got under my skin and fueled my sloth (of course, it could have been the gin and tonics at the King’s Arms in St Dunstan’s Lane). I wasn’t an especially patient student and my performance as a scholar reflected that. Still, inevitably I suppose, some learning got through. Here’s what I mean.
© 2024 John Oliver
Substack is the home for great culture