`A New State of Being Staggers Me'

The year in reading was splendid, as always. I investigated C.H. Sisson more thoroughly and admitted him to the pantheon. So too, Leopardi’s Zibaldone. I reread Svevo, Lampedusa and Gombrowicz. Joshua Mehigan published Accepting the Disaster, James Booth gave us Philip Larkin, Leo Damrosch his life of Swift and Joseph Epstein A Literary Education. Marilynne Robinson published Lila, and now we have the third volume of Beckett’s letters. We lost David Myers, my friend and half of my literary conscience. Charles Lamb writes in “New Year’s Eve”: 

“A new state of being staggers me. Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself—do these things go out with life?”