This work is inspired by a reading list drawn up, as fortune would have it, in the midst of a global pandemic (come to think of it, I should probably have included Boccaccio’s Il Decameron as well). Aside from van Loon’s work Tolerance, which I had originally selected to use as this list’s finale, I remain emotionally tied to and also feel enmity toward the realities of this world. However, different from before, my objective here is to write a book with the power of “one finger”.
The urge to read is fleeting, and so, I often think, if one were to give a person so inclined a gentle push with their finger at that precise ephemeral moment, might it not be just enough to convince them to sit down and become lost in those pages?