The difference between absolute claims for quality and individual testimony that a work of art reliably produces a sensation -- the difference between an example of a style and a work that I stand in front of.

Trying so hard in criticism to analyze how a writer produces sensations time and again, I forget that it's peculiar to be in unquestioning agreement with the universal tendency to specialize (tunnel vision).

It might be just as productive to muddle around in what's confusing, for example. The militarism in that sentence from "The Dead": "The snow was General over all Ireland."

Cold, no snow. From the park drive New York's money looks worth the agony, briefly. Huge orange smoke clouds blotting up the sunrise, which does its Louis-Kahn thing on the bricks, glass, and tin bay windows.