Brief Chronicles

Brief Chronicles consists of ninety-seven commentaries I wrote from 1962 to 1965 as Critic at Large for the New York Times. It is the chronological and I believe the legitimate successor to Tuesdays and Fridays, published in the spring of 1962. Since I am now retired, Brief Chronicles becomes the last volume in a series of two—not a long series but, I hope, a sociable one.
Before I drown my book and break my staff in the manner of Prospero I should like to make a few remarks about newspaper writing. If the self-conscious articles that I wrote for newspapers when I was a college student be included, I have been writing for newspapers for half a century. I began by writing about G. Bernard Shaw, as he was known in those days, and I have concluded by writing about spring birds in the Catskill Mountains. Very likely a critic schooled in neurological disorders could find something significant in the disparity of those subjects.