EGGHEAD CHOICE – Crack open for a hard boiled think

The title is a reference to a fragment attributed to the Greek poet Archilocus: πόλλ’ οἶδ’ ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ’ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα (“the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”). In Erasmus Rotterdamus’s Adagia from 1500, the expression is recorded as Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum. The fable of The Fox and the Cat embodies the same idea. […]

‘Literature as a way of life’ is the theme of this 1973 work by the self-assured Harold Bloom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Bloom and http://english.yale.edu/faculty-staff/harold-bloom). It is also an on-going conversation across the generations and between authors. Bloom traces out the strands of influence which connect all these authors of poetry. His take on the concept of influence is that

The standard publisher’s summary is very good on this one – Ever since the attacks of 11th September western leaders have described a world engaged in ‘a fight for civilization.’ But what do we mean by civilization? We believe in a western tradition of openness and freedom that has produced a good life for many

Joseph Campbell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell) was the great comparative mythologist of the twentieth century. In this book (1949), from an astonishing range of examples, Campbell constructs the ‘monomyth’, a universal structure found in mythologies, folk tales, and fairy tales across the globe. This is the “Hero’s Journey”. In addition, Campbell explores the Cosmogonic Cycle, the mythic pattern of world

Many attempts have been made to define exactly what makes us uniquely human. The use of tools? The use of language? A sense of morality? The practice of religion? But one of them has always been that humans tell stories. There is no known culture that does not possess sets of narratives which are handed

This book is a classic exploration of the short story with readings of Chekhov, Hemingway, Kipling, Joyce, and others. Published by Frank O’Connor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_O%27Connor) in 1962. Frank O’Connor 211 pages in Melville House Publishing paperback edition. ISBN 978-1935554424

The Sense of an Ending (1967) is a book which seeks to establish a connection between fiction, time and apocalyptic modes of thought. Frank Kermode (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Kermode) sees in the apocalyptic certain features which, he suggests, provide a useful analogy with the process of reading and writing fiction. The author tells us that in imagining an end