Harvey too used macroscopic pictures to describe microscopic realities, not unlike what I m doing in telling Paul s story. Vernon proceeds into DNA, Einstein s theory of space, the big bang, the ground of being. What a pleasure to read large thoughts that make the head swim with irresolvable paradox, wild speculation, the human intelligence batting away at its cage. A Book of Reasons might lead a reader to suspect that most contemporary nonfiction has gotten too small, too precious, too self-absorbed, and that most authors have read too little, know too little, and are timid in the presence of history, of science, of civilization itself. A Year of No Significance, in which a single uneventful year at the end of the Ming dynasty offers deeper insight into the Chinese past and consciousness than most massive academic histories.
Reasons are recipes for making sense of the world s arrangements and accidents.
They are explanations of why things are, how they work, what they mean, where they came from, how they began. We need reasons when we feel dislocated, when ordinary things seem unfamiliar and contingent, when there are no easy answers. Vernon is the author of many novels, but as far as I know, this is his first long essay. I hope there are more of them in him, for the culture badly needs more books of this kind with real thinking, and without the sensationalism of sordid confessions, miserable childhoods, terminal diseases, sexual disasters, all catalogued without reference to any genuine idea. It is clear that Vernon enjoys the play of his own intelligence at work, and his puzzled sadness over his brother s life is rooted in the suspicion that Paul had no such pleasure that his mental world as well as his physical was bounded by fear and boredom, and at the end defeated by garbage and loneliness.