He has produced useful translations (most popularly of "Beowulf," a best seller), idiosyncratic anthologies, a respectable body of criticism and, every few years, a new book of poems.
As a result, intellectual culture receives far less support than it should, and is generally regarded as at best the idiosyncratic interest of an eccentric minority.
This Brazilian fan is perhaps the best example (idiosyncratic English left as is): So, do you know what I think fans should do?
I would put at the very centre Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan of the Glasgow firm of Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, creators of the near-instant ruin of St Peter's seminary, Cardross, who were maverick in the very best sense: idiosyncratic, distinctive, unafraid and completely serious at the same time.
Besides the architecture and furnishings, best described as idiosyncratic, the home contains dozens of Church's paintings and sketches.
Yet after a qualifying campaign strategy best described as idiosyncratic, there is talk of Maradona beginning to acquire managerial gravitas.
"Life of Pi," at its best, celebrates the idiosyncratic wonders and dangers of raw, ravaging nature, and Lee wrings more than enough meaning from the excitement of that spectacle; we need nothing higher.
His subjects are uncharacteristically sombre (an abandoned cemetery, a rape in the neighbourhood, a friend's death from cancer), although there are enough passages that remind you of him at his idiosyncratic best.
The episode of the St.-Gervais bastion is Dumas at his idiosyncratic best: a heady mix of intrigue, action and laughing-in-the-face-of-death badinage (all superbly rendered in this translation).
As always, there is plenty of good television out there, it just isn't on the mainstream channels at primetime (with the exception of the outstanding, smart, beautifully unhurried The Honourable Woman (BBC2), which is British drama at its idiosyncratic best).
