`I Must Start Reading This Man'

Here are the contents of an e-mail my brother sent me earlier this evening:

“Today on the way to work I spotted a pile of books in the trash. I pulled over, parked and got out of the car to inspect them. A light drizzle had started a few minutes before I reached the pile and I debated whether or not to stop, I'm glad I did. Among the usual glop one finds curbside there was a 1947 Scribner's edition of Henry James's The Art of the Novel. I grabbed it and several 1970's editions of Life and went on my way to the shop. After opening up and all the other usual morning rituals I sat down and randomly opened the James volume to the `Preface to Roderick Hudson.' The first words I read were enough: `Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so.' In a nutshell, wow. I must start reading this man.”

Lucky dog.