A necessary strategy of literary criticism is to propose problems, and a necessary illusion is that those problems can be solved. But the problems an… - John Edward Williams

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A necessary strategy of literary criticism is to propose problems, and a necessary illusion is that those problems can be solved. But the problems and solutions are more often than not celebrations of the literature they address and gestures that would bring us closer to a past that is forever receding from us. The force of literature is at last magical, and the mysteries that we try to solve are the validations of its power.