Against Hamlet, Away with Melancholy: This book tries to describe a countermovement. A movement not from doubt to levelessness, but from dereliction to delight, from woe to weal. Pushing ourselves aside, ascending above and outside ourselves, we will try to find something else, some kind of joy, some kind of liberation and elevation, a sense that, despite everything, all shall be well (p8)

It is worth asking...why does one write? ... To write is to aspire towards, even to hope for, the mystery of a clearing that is other than the self, the vast windowless sunlit room of living experience. To write is to participate in the struggle to efface oneself. The problem is that the self keeps getting in the way. ...This is why writers noeed to employ subterfuge, to trick themslevs into being someone or something other than themselves.... p14

Seven Adverbs That God Loveth