In Search of Wonder

Karel Capek’s wonderful War With the Newts.

it’s pure fantasy for the love of it; and there are lines in that chapter that are feather-touches along the cheek.

alacrity.

The critical method is to take things apart. The critic uses the same sharp-edged tools on all stories, but good stories resist; bad ones come to pieces. One of these tools happens to be laughter; that’s all. I should have thought it was obvious.

tragedy bores us unless it is preventable, that beauty is like pablum without a touch of the ludicrous.