We get no more than a quick glance at the man on the street, the child in the woods, the witch at the well, the Lion among us. Our initial impression, most often, has to serve. Still, that first crude glimpse, a clutch of raw hypotheses that can never be soundly clinched or dismissed, is often all we get before we must choose whether to lean forward or to avert our eyes. Slim evidence indeed, but put together with mere hints and echoes of what we have once read, we risk cherishing one another. Light will blind us in time, but what we learn in the dark can see us through. To read, even in the
...more
