“In Eudora Welty’s masterful story “Why I Live at the P.O.” (1941), the narrator is engaged in a sibling rivalry with her younger sister, who has come home after leaving under suspicious if not actually disgraceful circumstances. The narrator, Sister,… — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
“I can’t go as far as Barthes in killing off the author, but I’m with him on the importance of the reader. We are… — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
“of his need to assert responsibility for his own life. It may be that Adela does panic in the face of Nothingness, only recovering… — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
“When it's over, we may feel wooed, adored, appreciated, or abused, but it will have been an affair to remember.” — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
“The novels we read allow us to encounter possible persons, versions of ourselves hat we would never see, never permit ourselves to see, never… — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
“Education is mostly about institutions and getting tickets stamped; learning is what we do for ourselves. When we're lucky, they go together. If I… — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
“The novels we read allow us to encounter possible persons, visions of ourselves that we would never see, never permit ourselves to become, in… — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
“we accept fictions as fictions, as things that might be true in their world, if not quite in ours.” — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
“We sometimes hear of the death of literature or of this or that genre, but literature doesn't die, just as it doesn't 'progress' or… — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
“Always" and "never" are not words that have much meaning in literary study. For one thing, as soon as something seems to always be… — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
“What happens if the writer is good is usually not that the work seems derivative or trivial but just the opposite: the work actually… — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
“characters as rich and complex as those we believe ourselves to be” — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
