On one side. I read a lot because I’d like to think the answer is out there, ready to be stumbled over, because someone smarter has seen it already. More than that, when found, I’d realize that Piece-of-Truth had been right in front of me–the writing on the wall.
On the other. Why does sustained analysis often deepen, rather than dispel, complexity? Answer: It’s less the “analysis” than the “sustained” we call explication. This drive to explicate—to explain so as to explain more and then even more—has been criticized by the wildly different Peter Sloterdijk, philosopher, and Shirley Hazzard, novelist. Further, the more we explicate, the more we feel compelled to name the now more complicated. Surely, the brain must be hard-wired for all this.
Which side? A while back I culled old journal issues that I’d been saving. Partly to see what I had commented on then by way of marginalia, but also to see if what I had read pointed to what I think now. My scribbles were unreadable.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 