"They say you know nothing at eighteen. But there are things you know at eighteen that you will never know again."
The Truth About Conspiracy Theories — By Those Who Study Them
Villeneuve’s Dune: Reviewing the Reviewers (and a Review)
Like Sports, Ideas Have To Be Played To Be Tested
The passage at the top is from Steve Ayers’ essay “The Art of Book Collecting.” He is a more sophisticated and knowledgeable bibliophile than I will ever be. I can marvel at the books he owns without coveting them. I agree with his statement that “book collecting in itself is a good thing.” So too, the stockpiling of food and medicine in wartime is a good – and pragmatic -- thing. I remember as a kid reading in a literature textbook Walter van Tilburg Clark’s short story “The Portable Phonograph” (1941). The setting is a war-ravaged wasteland. Four men huddle in a shelter around a peat-fire. The host is an old man who has salvaged four books he keeps wrapped in burlap: Shakespeare, the Bible, Moby Dick and the Divine Comedy. Four inevitable choices, as in a desert-island fantasy. The old man says:
“[W]hat do we know of those who will come after us? We are the doddering remnant of a race of mechanical fools. I have saved what I love; the soul of what was good in us here; perhaps the new ones will make a strong enough beginning not to fall behind when they become clever.”
