"Sitting in judgment on oneself" means mediating one's ideas, emotions and anxieties through one's characters, who in their turn have to absorb the subject matter into their bloodstream – in the case of Ghosts: patriarchy, class, free love, prostitution, hypocrisy, heredity, incest and euthanasia.
Indeed, he was too absorbed by the subject matter to fret about that kind of stuff when we discussed progress.
To explain matters, moreover, he plunges fairly deeply into the convoluted world of Florentine and Roman politics, which can be slow going for those not absorbed by that subject.
Ellison is absorbed by the subject of style.
Others have subject-matter expertise.
Subject-matter experts were given double weight.
His habit of dropping preciosities like "soon or late" and "dear reader" and of beginning sentences with "Too,...'..' would have made me fling the book down if I hadn't found its subject matter so extremely absorbing.
Another reviewer praised the format, saying the "free-verse format suits the young narrator and subject matter well" and concluding that "Readers searching for an accessible Holocaust novel will be absorbed by this haunting story based on true events".
His subject matter was Yoruban myths, many of them recited to him by his mother, and others absorbed through the novels of Amos Tutuola and Daniel O. Fagunwa.
I was both intrigued and amused by the combination of light-hearted subject matter and serious scholarship and spent the rest of the week poring over every page, giggling at the ludicrous research, but absorbed by the results.
