Plurality

I've run out of novels to read. Novels I've not read before, I mean. I've never got into extended reading on-line, so any kind of e-book is out, and the bookshops and libraries are all closed. I suppose I could order something from Amazon or the Book Depository or the like, but somehow I can't be bothered. Of course, I've got one or two unread tomes about the place - especially with regard to various Collecteds on the poetry front - but not the kind of thing I'd regard as 'bread and butter' reading.

Over the last three days I've been filling in with the March edition of The New York Review of Books, which I purchased from the magazine shop on the corner at Holland Village just before the big shut-down. Reading it I was reminded of a feeling I've had before when going cover-to-cover through an issue: a sense of the variousness of the world and how little I really know about it.

I found myself fascinated by most of the articles, including stuff on Elizabeth Warren, cartoonists in the great 'screwball' tradition, the life and novels of Madeleine L'Engle, the development of armour in medieval Europe, the reputation of Mao Zedong and various manifestations of Maoism around the world, the life and dramas of Dario Fo, various demagogues in America, various 'post-traumatic' novels, assassinations associated with Vladimir Putin, the earliest known cities, and the parlous situation of adjunct teachers in American universities. Oh, and I missed out the piece that had the most intense effect on me - an article by Bill McKibben on climate change that left me almost entirely woebegone.

Quite a list, eh? The world remains incorrigibly plural even when we are in danger of sinking into abject singularity.