`The Reader Who Knows How to Read'

“The only indices of civilization are the clarity, lucidity, order, good manners of everyday prose.”

What is “everyday prose”? Emails? Tweets? Blog posts? Other digital tantrums?

“Nothing is so important that it does not matter how it is written.”

We write everything well; that is, clearly and memorably.

“The writer should be only his own spokesman.”

Heresy. Writers are shills.

“The `common reader’ is as rare as common sense.”

Rarer. Almost extinct.

“An authentic reader is someone who reads for pleasure the books which everyone else only studies.”

Reading Unamuno again brings me back to the aphorisms of Don Colacho, Nicolás Gómez Dávila.

“All literature is contemporary for the reader who knows how to read.”

“Expanding Overton” has posted four videos devoted to the aphorisms of Don Colacho.