Maynard Mack

“It takes much harder work to write for the public than to write for one's colleagues. And it has a cleansing effect on one's vocabulary. Pompous gibberish rapidly disappears.”

“We have likewise lost face, in my opinion, by fostering a vast deal of solemn nonsense about "published scholarship." To study, to keep learning, to read widely and reflectively: these pursuits are essential to our profession, it goes without saying. I believe, too, that it is crucial to one's intellectual vitality to try to write (when one has something to write worth writing), partly for the same reason that hard physical exercise is important for physical health, partly because there is truth in the old chestnut: how do I know what I mean till I see what I say?”

“Have the prospects of the humanities ever been entirely reassuring? I suspect not.”