Volume 46, Number 18 · November 18, 1999
The Eye of the Beholder
By Stuart Hampshire
On Beauty and Being Just
by Elaine Scarry
Princeton University Press, 134 pp., $15.95
Elaine Scarry is reviving, in her style of thought, a tradition that might have been thought to be dead or dying. It is the grand style of Ruskin and Pater, which became a principal inspiration for Proust in the long passages of his novel where he was trying to be more precise in describing his impressions and sensations than any novelist had ever been before. In this style, the secret of life is to be found in the arts of attention, in an exaggerated noticing, as in Ruskin's The Stones of Venice.
Review, 3434 words
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