A popular miscalculation in my view is the notion of a first and last in literature. Presumably to enhance their subject's importance, scholars and critics have made out a writer to be the first or last of a kind. The problem is that no sooner is someone proclaimed the first, someone else comes up with an earlier specimen; and hardly has someone been pronounced a last, than somebody produces a later specimen. But wha…
SOURCE: John Simon at 02:12AM on October 8, 2017