Monday, October 10, 2005

Foxes and Hedgehogs

Geoff Dyer writes
although we live in a time that sets great store by measuring progress ("research" in academic parlance) in precisely demarcated areas of knowledge, real advances are often made by people happy to muddle along within the splendidly vague job description advanced by Susan Sontag, whose "idea of a writer [was] someone interested in 'everything'". Why, realistically, would one settle for anything less?
This piece was crying out for Berlin's Hedgehog and Fox essay but Dyer didn't use it.

Was this to deny reader expectation?

Because he doesn't like Isaiah Berlin?

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