Circumference of light

Golf, A. A. Milne observes, is different from cricket or football because it is the bad player who gets the most strokes. Lewis Carroll lived, eyes wide-open, the life of Alice, this was his genius. Why then did he leave it to us as dream. In Happy Half-Hours, Milne also considers the nature of cupboards (why needed), fixtures like curtain rods (how not like carpets), ideas such as individuality (essential), happiness, women’s happiness (creating new complications), and war (can we discredit as dishonorable as dueling), and on and off, the nature of a literary life (the thrill of writing; writing during daytime, aging only at night; writers as always apprentices, no front-room authority like teachers or clergymen; writing less than a full bookcase).