If there is one pleasure available to mankind it's doing what we're not supposed to do - playing, fiddling, mooching, galooting and otherwise tickling our fancies. This explains, for example, why people come home early, or stay out all night long, why we sleep in, sleep over, drink to excess, write, read or publish literary criticism, and commit crime. It certainly helps explain why Bevis Hillier has written an enormous biography of a dead English minor poet.

LRB 20 February 2003 | PDF Download