David Mason

Carnets

Arts & Literature

“A carnet is a notebook—one thinks of Levinas and Camus—but it is also a customs permit for crossing a frontier. Each of Kevin Hart’s marvelous aphorisms, gnomic and piquant, witty and lyrical, offers the wisdom of provocation. ‘The bigger the truth, the fewer the words,’ he writes. Then, as if to prove it: ‘Loss is the boss.’ There are fine insights into poetry: ‘To write one line, one must forget many books.’ And faith: ‘God calls us home where we have never been.’ And dailiness: ‘Salt life with death—just enough.’ Carnets is the work of fifty years, and I imagine it will last as long as people read.”