I should have gone on waiting. I had hoped that the clash between his fussiness and the chaotic modern world would lead to a fine story. Given the passage I quoted yesterday about the color distinctions in crack vials, I kept hoping. But rather than exploring the confrontation, Kurzweil withdraws his narrator into a constructed antiquarian world, shutting him off from the vitality of life. A strange old man hires the librarian to solve the mystery of an empty space in an 18th century Wunderkammer.
Old man betrays librarian.
Librarian gets revenge. Revenge doesn't satisfy him. So he trashes his carefully ordered world in favor of writing down the story itself. The story he writes is, of course, the very book we've been reading. Didn't see that one coming.