i also think of this in terms of something
> George Trail once said to me, which I think he maybe got from Bloom: that
> writers never really like their audience. They sometimes actually despise
> them. Think they are kind of dolts. (Don't blame him on this, I may have
> gotten him entirely wrong).
To some extent that has to be the attitude of a serious writer, or else she/he gets bogged down in their work the way left political analysts can get bogged down (and worthless) when they focus mostly on what will go over with "the pubic." In Par. II (from memory here) Dante addresses his reader directly, roughly: "You in the little bark tied to my ship and following me hold on tight because we are now going into deep waters where you will be lost if you lose sight of me." (Something like that.) Pound (thanks to Dante) can handle it more briefly and without expansion:
"You in the little dinghy astern there." Jim Devine quotes Marx paraphrasing a similar remark in Dante's Comedy.
Carrol