太阳下的风景

从十二岁出来，在外头生活了将近四十五年，才觉得我们那个县城实在是太小了。不过，在天涯海角，我都为它而骄傲，它就应该是那么小，那么精致而严密，那么结实。它也实在是太美了，以致以后的几十年我到哪里也觉得还是我自己的故乡好；原来，有时候，还以为可能是自己的偏见。最近两次听到新西兰的老人艾黎说：“中国有两个最美的小城，第一是湖南凤凰，第二是福建的长汀……”他是以一个在中国生活了将近六十年的老朋友说这番话的，我真是感激而高兴。

成年人的谎言生活

怎么可能现在她就像死了，我在米兰，她却已经不在这里了？我心想，我们这么容易从别人的生活里消失吗？尤其是从那些我们离不开的人的生活中？

偶然的创造

我们碰巧成为自己，但我们可以不止于此。

如何读，为什么读

Melville was not a Christian, and tended to identify with the ancient Gnostic heresy, in which the creator God of this world is a bungler and impostor, while the true God, called the Stranger or Alien God, is exiled somewhere in the outer regions of the cosmos.Early, major Faulkner is a kind of unknowing Gnostic; West, Pynchon, and McCarthy in their different ways are very knowing indeed. My subject is how to read their best fiction, and why, and not how to instruct my own readers in ancient heterodoxies (at least not here!), but the first sequence of four novels that I have chosen, in the wake of Melville, achieve their negative splendors in modes parallel to Gnostic visions, as we will see.