Literary history is an artifice

We envisage the literature of every century as a corpus of works grouped around a core of classics; and we derive our notion of the classics from our professors, who took it from their professors, who got it from theirs, and so on, back to some disappearing point in the early nineteenth century. Literary history is an artifice, pieced together over many generations, shortened here and lengthened there, worn thin in some places, patched over in others, and laced through everywhere with anachronism. It bears little relation to the actual experience of literature in the past.

- from The Forbidden Best-sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, Robert Darnton

inadvertently to read fiction for the right reason

The mistake is that too many people are confused about what reading fiction is for. They believe you're supposed to read novels to be improved, to be present at the clash of great ideas, to be challenged by new and profound ways to look at life. And then it turns out, they're too tired.

Oh, they buy the books, the serious award winners, described by publisher and critic alike as important, ground-breaking, even deeply disturbing. They pay their dues. But when the moment comes, once again they fall off. Just for now, just as a stopgap, sheepishly they slink off, inadvertently to read fiction for the right reason: because it's fun.

- Donald Westlake, introduction to Murderous Schemes, 1996

Hardly a topic was left unchallenged

He lighted the candles, for it was now dark, made the tea, and supplied the friend with whom he had  been playing golf (for I believe the authorities of the University I write of indulge in that pursuit by way of relaxation); and tea was taken to the accompaniment of a discussion which golfing persons can imagine for themselves, but which the conscientious writer has no right to inflict upon non-golfing persons.

...

[Next morning], during breakfast nothing was said about the mezzotint by Williams, save that he had a picture on which he wished for Nesbit's opinion. But those who are familiar with University life can picture for themselves the wide and delightful range of subjects over which the conversation of the two Fellows of Canterbury College is likely to extend during a Sunday morning breakfast. Hardly a topic was left unchallenged, from golf to lawn-tennis.

- from "The Mezzotint" by M.R. James. James taught Classics at Cambridge; Canterbury College is at Oxford.

While in intense dental agony

Cavities ...[were] one of humankind's oldest miseries. Terrified of tooth extraction, people often suffered intense and chronic pain - and many of these people were history's major policymakers. It is surprising that history books omit the fact that, for instance, Louis XIV and Elizabeth I (to mention only two policy-shaping figures) often had to render major decisions while in intense dental agony. Louis, in 1685, signed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (which had granted religious freedom), causing thousands to emigrate, while he was in the throes of a month-long tooth infection. It had developed into a raw, unhealing opening between the roof of his mouth and his sinuses.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, suffered chronically from deep, massive cavities but feared the misery of extraction. In December 1578, an unrelenting tooth pain kept her awake day and night for two weeks, necessitating drugs that were themselves heavily disorientating. ... Throughout the weeks of misery, she had continued to oversee legislation that affected the lives of millions of subjects.

... A volume of speculative history could be written on the effects of severe and protracted dental pain on policy-making.

- from the endlessly quotable Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, Charles Panati, 212.