A recalcitrance to mastery …

… Ever Green - bookforum.com / current issue. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Green would have hated it in the present, where long sentences are considered stressful, the most insane trivialities make the headlines, and writing for a daily readership means explaining, list-making, fact-checking, annotating, and opining about nothing. "Inexplicable" appears in criticism as some kind of diss (an actor has an "inexplicable accent," a heroine "inexplicably falls in love" with a freak), but if a critic can't explain something, then either the critic is ultracrepidarian or the thing is best unexplained. "If you want to create life," Green said, "the one way not to set about it is by explanation."

Anyone who hates the present can't be all bad.