John Baker’s Blog

Denis Donoghue in The Chronicle Review maintains that, unlike rhetoric, eloquence never sent any soldier to be killed in a foreign field.
This is a recollection of his time at University College Dublin in the 1940s:
I was alert to the fact that there were a few cult books that we expected one another to know by [...]

I was reminded of something TS Eliot said in the collection of essays entitled The Sacred Wood.
In discussing modern literature, Eliot wonders why we place so much value on the writer’s difference to the past, on his individuality, on the ways in which he least resembles anything that has gone before. Because, Eliot argues “we [...]

There will be time . . .
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; T.S. Eliot

Masks are void of all substance. They hide identity and project the image of another personality.
In tribal societies the mask is used to protect the individual from isolation, and to unite [...]

1. Why do you blog?
I fell into blogging by accident. I didn’t even know what blogs were really when my sister gave me a subscription to Typepad as a gift. At first I didn’t have a clue what to write and it was a bit depressing as no one ever seemed to visit [...]