Even at 90 treasures are available in what one reads.
● There is a scene in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence when the lovers, Ellen Olenska and Newland Archer, meet in the old Metropolitan Museum in New York in a deserted room containing antique fragments from vanished llium. Ellen wanders over to a case: “It seems cruel that after a while nothing matters…any more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labeled “Use unknown.” “Yes”, her lover replies, “but meanwhile.” “Ah, meanwhile –.”
● Why does one write, except for bread? I read William Faulkner’s answer: “Because it’s worth the trouble.” The force of that lapidary justification lies in its single minded focus on the internal processes of literary creation – what Flaubert called the writer’s “adventures” with words. It implicitly rejects the obvious incentives which impel anyone to do anything at all in life – such as the classic Freudian trio of money, fame and the lure of beautiful women.
