Sublime

“Matthew was vulnerable,” he said. “That is one of the best things a poet can offer to a reader.”

Briefly Carleton considered the other man, of whom he’d made such a study he might have been appointed professor of Thomas Studies at the University of Essex. He knew, for example, that Thomas was a confirmed bachelor, as they say, never seen in the company of a beautiful young person or a stately older one; that he had about him the melancholy rel

return. In some quarters he’s believed too sentimental to be taken seriously, and fatally flawed by a tendency to think too kindly of his characters – but Thomas believes that any writer who thinks himself better than the products of his own imagination should seek out some more appropriate profession (such as dentistry, for example, or the constru

He has a kind, round face and the relaxed, easygoing manner of someone who’s spent most of his life in California.

deferential