Frontispiece

What I like about words, and the joining together of words in books and articles, is that they always connect to other words, and other words joined together in other books and articles. So if you've got the time you can munch your way through a wonderfully eclectic collection, all secretly (or not so secretly) connected...and still it's possible to get nowhere. Backwards from nowhere, actually, because there's just too much to read; so you think you've read something substantial and then realise that there's a whole different area of knowledge out there that you're never going to have time to grasp, ever. Every text opens up a vast void like this - so by the time I finish my degree I'll know (as a proportion of what I know there is to be known) less then I did when I started. And the harder I work and the more I read, the less (proportionately speaking) I'll know.

There's a choice, probably: (1) Stop reading. Then I won't become aware of any more unknowns and will be able to fool myself into satisfaction with what I do know. Or, (2) Keep reading. Omnivorously, with my eyes hanging out (as Alistair Fowler says). This has the significant downside of making very obvious every single thing I don't (and will never) know; though is balanced by the advantage of at least being an attempt. This seems simultaneously depressing and exciting.

There is another issue with (2), which is - for me - the more troublesome. The more pedantic and academic I get about reading things, the less real work gets done. Despite any amount of effort, my manifest productivity rests at next to nothing - a book that's been read looks pretty much the same as one that hasn't (though it might be a little bit happier). A lot of reading and thinking does get done - honestly! - but by the time the original text's been read, all unknown or ambiguous words looked up (and, if cool, their etymologies - and the etymologies of the etymologies, if we're on a roll), cited articles or books pursued, tangential texts tackled, slightly wrelevant writings looked at; by the time all this has been done the next project (normally externally imposed) is vying for attention. Not to mention all the potential projects rearing their heads in the process of all that reading. And so I move on, and leave in my wake a lot of books read - but far more untouched. It's the only reason I would ever choose to live longer than a natural lifespan, to read more. It would also be pretty awesome to be a (male) contemporary of Marlowe &co. - it was definitely easier to read everything 'important' within one lifespan. And everyone spoke in blank verse back in them Olden Times.

Had fun the other night. Decided that, despite the fact I generally think him a pillock, I probably ought to read more T. S. Eliot - his criticism, at least. Got hold of a copy of his earliest essays, The Sacred Wood, and was delighted to find on the very first page the admission that the criticism within is tinged with "a stiffness and an assumption of pontifical solemnity". This was written, by the way, eight years after the essays (and is included in the book as prefatory material). I like Eliot much more now, just for that slight apology. His arrogance and eloquence are breathtaking, and brilliantly coupled. He wouldn't be half so eloquent without the arrogance. He can, therefore, keep it.