But any raggedness seems entirely fitting for a book created from a vantage point of both magisterial confidence and profound uncertainty – looking back on a life of extraordinary artistic achievement from the vulnerability of old age. There are smudges and rubbings out, feints and wavering handwriting; impressionistic scribbles, in which the dog Jess is a joyous scrawl of life-force energy, contrast with calm vistas of landscape. In studies of that long-lived breadboard, or a light switch or door handle, decades of wear and emotion are miraculously made visible.
When I made sushi, customers would sometimes ask me, “What’s good tonight?” These men (and they were all men) misunderstood where they were and what I did. The restaurant was in a ramshackle strip mall, a few doors down from a laundromat. I didn’t sample the fish before dinner service or skulk around a market at dawn. As far as I was concerned, all our fish was sourced from the same place: the freezer. I would tell the customers it was all good. I wish I’d told them the truth: That it was all the best, the best in town, the best in the world.
The Encylopédie’s true intention was to secularize thought during a time when the Church and monarchy were supreme in France and in much of Europe. What Diderot and his confreres thought “the best interests of the human race” were not shared by the Church, monarchy, and much of the aristocracy. To make their views prevail the establishment had the weapon of censorship on its side. Censorship in that day had real muscle behind it; prison, even execution, could accompany it. Before he took up editorship of the Encylopédie, Diderot served three months in prison for an early essay called “Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who Can See,” and never afterward wrote without looking over his shoulder.
Reading this book, while trying to forget the many retellings of it, constantly takes us on these surprising journeys. This is no dusty relic, but instead something sparkling and modern. The theme is a narrator asking himself if he’s to become the hero of his own life, and giving as his answer 800 pages in which he seems not to know who he is, shuttled from memory to memory, sanctuary to sanctuary, and even from name to name: each new relationship David forms is marked by a fresh christening as he gets called Davy, then Trotwood, soon shortened to Trot, then suddenly Daisy followed by Doady. If I were an academic, I’d say we’re in the realms of meta-fiction (I’m not, so I won’t).