As the literary world absorbs the loss of one of its most interesting minds and talents, we take solace in the gift that his work continues to live on. From his 2005 Kenyon commencement speech:
... [R]eal freedom... is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
