A man was walking in New York City when he passed a street vendor with books laid out on the pavement. In the $1 pile was a copy of the latest Philip Roth novel, which he’d loved. He picked it up, turned to the first page – to find a very loving inscription, written by himself, to his newly ex-girlfriend.
This is a true story, says rare book dealer and author Rick Gekoski, told to him by a good friend. “He said it was very embarrassing. I said: ‘Did you buy it?’ He said, ‘Of course. Then I threw it in the nearest wastepaper basket.’”
Looking back at this culture-shifting review, we might wonder whether such a moment can be replicated in our modern literary and journalistic landscape. The persuasive power of an individual review today is vastly diluted by the fragmentation of the media and the frantic chirping of cable channels, Facebook posts, Twitter feeds and text messaging at all hours. Abbreviated attention moves on at an almost mindless speed. A trend rises and vanishes, all but forgotten before it ever sticks. A book and a book review — even if capturing a cultural turning point — today can’t help losing the competition for eyes to Twitter bursts and viral videos. One might wonder what social transitions are never noticed these days in all the noise.
What is the lure of this great land, this ultimate Northwest, Ultima Thule? Something other than the sum of its natural wonder and the drama of its history. There is no other place on earth like it, not even remotely, and if you have spent considerable time here, as have I, it keeps tugging at you when you are gone. It offers, as few other places do, the promise of flat-out old-fashioned adventure. It is inhabited by a kind of people who just do not exist anywhere else. Furthermore, it is heartbreakingly beautiful. It has had its bards but never the epic poet it deserves because before its grandeur and its ferocity one can only be overwhelmed, humbled, silenced. You can live there even now and be a true pioneer, but that will not be true for very much longer—and it is this knowledge too that draws one back, for over this land hangs a vague but palpable melancholy. And through it all winds one road, a lifeline, an achievement of heroic proportions that opened up unlimited potential, brought the world to a few thousand people and revealed a land that since time immemorial had existed in its grandeur and its permanence. The road brought the world, the road brought riches, and the road inevitably cannot but fail to bring the end to a way of life we will never see again.
Everyone dies, but almost nobody expects to die today. Yet, accidents do happen. In 2017, accidents and unintentional injuries were the third-most-common cause of death of Americans. Although we live in a remarkably safe world by historical standards, many of us needlessly increase our risk of sickness, injury and even death without realizing it. Let’s look at a hypothetical day and see which choices have the greatest potential benefits to our well-being.
Before even its title page, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming comes prefaced with a “warning”. Over the course of seven pages, which may or may not have anything to do with the 550 pages that follow, an orchestral conductor delivers a peroration that is also a rant that is also a kind of philosophical projectile missile. Though it seems to be addressed to his musical performers, it’s unclear whether this isn’t actually one long interior monologue, bringing to mind the troubled babble of Samuel Beckett’s Not I.
This conductor is obsessive. About his violinists he declares: “I want to know even their most idiotic thoughts concerning the falling resin dust, or how often they trim their nails.” A glass-completely-empty type, he tells his musicians: “Apart from your admittedly modest compensation there is no reward whatsoever, of course, accordingly, no joy, no consolation.” And he is happy being thought of as a dictator: “There is no point trying to oppose me, no sense at all.”