Square one*

There are now so many books it's as if there were no books. And so much of every medium it's as if there were no media. If everything is told then we're back to square one, with as much to make sense of as we started with and no distillation, no reduction, no summary, the "raised voice" of the poet inaudible in the racket, the vision of the painter indecipherable in the welter, and as for music, forget it.

But it's a fallacy, because there's a new world for every individual, every day, untold, undepicted, unlived, unknown, and other things starting with "un". Yes, you got it, the old world is gone with the wind.

*On browsing www.granta.com

Ossian