“I don't think you go back to those things just to re-experience what you felt when you first encountered them. You go back because you know you haven't gotten to the bottom of the Sound and the Fury. You know that in Lincoln's second inaugural address there are rhythms, there are cadences that supersede the turns of phrase and will communicate to you like music. And the melodies will be different, the rhythms will be different each time you go back. To me that's what a classic is.
... I think all classics, at least in the way I'm trying to talk about them, are in some essential way unfinished. They're open. They do not say, 'this is the way the world is; this is how it works. And that's all there is to it.' They are alive to their own fragility, and their own unlikeness. ”
Greil Marcus
... I think all classics, at least in the way I'm trying to talk about them, are in some essential way unfinished. They're open. They do not say, 'this is the way the world is; this is how it works. And that's all there is to it.' They are alive to their own fragility, and their own unlikeness. ”
Greil Marcus
