from School of The Unconfirmed on Substack
Bibliolabyrinths & eating (over) books
All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our own country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remotely from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.
from The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells, 1885
Friday night, circa 1980-something, and I (Peco) am hurtling down the highway in an apple red manual-shift Volkswagen Rabbit. I loved that car, which my father would later crash during a wicked storm my mother warned him about. But he never listened, and they got t-boned in an intersection with my baby niece in the backseat. Miraculously they got off with only slight injuries, but the Rabbit ended up like a karate-chopped Coke can.
Weeks. That’s how long it took me to learn stick in that car, repeatedly stalling it on the circular gravel driveway of the timber-walled country home where we lived. When I did finally master it, I relished the sense of being an extension of the vehicle, right hand on stick, left hand on wheel, feet dancing between gas, brake and clutch. I was part of a machine, but rather than making me less human when I drove it, it made me somehow more.