This issue of TRO is about the tremendous opposites Known and Unknown. —I just wrote that sentence, and I’m aware it follows a phrase in which the word unknown is centrally present: the phrase “Dear Unknown Friends.” And so, in light of our subject, I’ll say something about that salutation.

It is the greeting with which every number of this periodical has begun for over fifty years—since the 105th issue, when Eli Siegel himself first began TRO that way. The phrase itself is a oneness of opposites: there’s a tender closeness in both the meaning and sound of Dear and Friends, with those rs and ds; and also, in the middle of the phrase, there are wideness and mystery and even a touch of eternity in the Unknown. I have loved the feeling of warmth and wonder in that greeting. And I have also loved its correctness: for we do not know who, with thought and emotion, will be reading the issues of this journal, be it when they’re first published, or in the years, decades, centuries to be.

As to our present issue: it is an honor to reprint here Mr. Siegel’s essay “Known and Unknown: Washington Irving’s ‘The Stout Gentleman.’” I consider this essay literary criticism of the highest caliber. And its prose is powerful, yet feels flexible too, respectfully casual. The essay shows the importance of an undervalued story of Irving; it places that story in relation to people’s lives and worries and confusions…. more