The New York Times online this evening
has two passages of interest.
From an obituary by Helen T. Verongos of
fiction writer Mavis Gallant—
"Ms. Gallant also endowed children with
special powers that vanish as they grow up.
In 'The Doctor,' she wrote: 'Unconsciously,
everyone under the age of 10 knows
everything. Under-ten can come into a room
and sense at once everything felt, kept
silent, held back in the way of love, hate and
desire, though he may not have the right
words for such sentiments. It is part of the
clairvoyant immunity to hypocrisy we are born
with and that vanishes just before puberty.' "
From a review by William Grimes of a memoir
by non-fiction writer Joachim Fest—
"Not I shrinks the Wagnerian scale of
German history in the 1930s and 1940s to
chamber music dimensions. It is intensely
personal, cleareyed and absolutely riveting,
partly because the author, thrust into an
outsider’s position, developed a keen
appreciation of Germany’s contradictions
and paradoxes."
Related material in this journal—
Octobers for Fest (Sept. 13, 2006).