“A clear conscience is often the sign of a bad memory.”–Unknown

Just a footnote (known to non-academics as a “second thought”) to my post of yesterday about originality and quality in literature:  though I went to bed last night with a reasonably clear conscience about my post, I thought again this morning that perhaps I should’ve remarked somewhere in all that article-like post that I didn’t once mention the great Romantic and Victorian American, French, German, Russian (and other) novelists.  This was and wasn’t deliberate.  I didn’t forget them, nor was I neglecting to mention as a matter of my own national chauvinism or spite the many cross-currents literary thought follows.  I was merely following and detailing the sources and literary traditions of the English novel because it has been a particularly welcome comic inspiration to my own work.  As you may have noticed, some of the sources of the English novel itself were from other countries, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post.  And if you’ve read my “About” page, you will know that I am myself an American, and I have enjoyed both novels from the U.S. and from all the other countries listed above (though most of them in translation).  So, now that I’ve given credit where credit is due, my conscience is truly clear, and in the posts to come I hope to be able to “get on with it.”