And yet, any numerical probability, I will argue — whether in a scientific paper, as part of weather forecasts, predicting the outcome of a sports competition or quantifying a health risk — is not an objective property of the world, but a construction based on personal or collective judgements and (often doubtful) assumptions. Furthermore, in most circumstances, it is not even estimating some underlying ‘true’ quantity. Probability, indeed, can only rarely be said to ‘exist’ at all.
Lists are important because they manage our order of discourse. And because they are the heart of information systems, they teach us how data becomes knowledge. In Rabelais’s time, the old cosmology of medieval knowledge was dismantled piece by piece and reconstructed into the new constellation of the humanist encyclopedia. This state-of-the-art knowledge was then scattered far and wide by printed books. The historian Ann Blair has shown that this proliferation of books gave rise to the anxiety of “too much to know.” It was the newly invented printing press that inspired Rabelais to summon forth the incandescent trope of poetic enumeration.
Honestly though, for a book that Crocker promotes as ‘anti-human propaganda’, it is filled with suspiciously lively and inexplicably loveable weirdos whose raw and relatable (in?)human emotions get you emotionally invested to a point that is honestly not safe for your own sanity. I loved seeing unexpected bonds of loyalty and friendship (and maybe even more? CUTE) tentatively start to develop between them, despite their best efforts to pretend they truly absolutely didn’t care for each other (nice try). And don’t get me started on how much I adored all the fierce, feisty and fearsome ladies, they just truly stole the show for me in Lightfall. From the rebellious Sam and her quietly endearing friend Beth, to the deviously clever and enigmatic Lady Hocquard and Alanna, and can’t forget the snarky and deadly werewolf assassin Raven Ansbach; I want to be them all when I grow up.
Hope is often fundamental to action, essential for rousing readers out of complacency; despair, meanwhile, can be an unhelpful emotion when the planet is spinning each day toward deeper environmental crises and feedback loops.
The dilemma points to another question — large, existential, and increasingly urgent: What “action” can people take? What could a single suitably roused reader even do anymore? In Katherine Rundell’s collection of short essays, “Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures,” the answer begins with a four-letter word we should all do more of: care.
Abigail Thomas is known as a writer’s writer — what that means in practice is that while her books are blurbed by some of the biggest stars in the book world (Stephen King, Anne Lamott, Elizabeth Gilbert), she herself is not as widely known as she should be.
Readers who have not yet experienced her work, which includes children’s books, novels and stories for adults, craft books for aspiring writers, and three previous memoirs, should not miss the opportunity to read her latest, “Still Life at Eighty,” a brilliant exploration of the writer’s accumulated wisdom, dogged curiosity, and breathtaking honesty.