Elegance of construction in literature is often due to the organized arrangement of elements beneath the level of the reader’s consciousness. These “subliminal” elements are recognized and connected by the pattern-recognizing, intuitive right brain. As a result, the passage somehow “feels right.”

Those of you who followed the series LOST will have recognized Hurley and Sawyer playing ping pong in the photo above the title of today’s Monday Morning Memo. 

Warm, loves-everybody, takes-care-of-everyone Hurley is the living embodiment of John Donne’s statement, “No man is an island.” 

Distant, cynical, every-man-for-himself Sawyer is the living embodiment of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s assertion that every man is an island.

Layered subtleties such as the shadowed connection between
(1.) Hurley and Sawyer and
(2.) the quotes from Donne and Lindbergh
are usually at the heart of any work that strikes us as
being deeper than is immediately apparent.