Finished now with The Recognition of Emily Dickinson. I don't know what I expected--maybe the recognition that I accord her: America's one and only great lyric poet. That, of course, is not what any of the critics and appreciators say; but I say it. I will go further: There are three immortal geniuses in American literature: Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, and Emily Dickinson. There are other geniuses, some of them very good (Henry James, Kurt Vonnegut, Gertrude Stein, Gore Vidal, to name but four others), but immortality (in the sense of inexhaustible profundity, charm, and wit) belongs to those three alone. Contrarily, I very much dislike the formless maunderings of Walt Whitman (though--with reservations--I like the man), and the pathetic/sadistic, mannered nihilism of Hemingway nauseates me. What more is there to say?