What We Can Know

by Ian McEwan

But Shakespeare’s case can stand for the rest. We still know very little about him. The cultivation and examination of the self, as represented by the character of Hamlet – a revolutionary moment in world literature – had yet to be translated into a general habit of reflective journal-keeping.

we are all innocent children in the tall forest of our clever inventions.

Not only climate scientists, but millions, even hundreds of millions of ordinary people understood the processes of the Derangement.

The imagined lords it over the actual – no paradox or mystery there. Many religious believers do not want their God depicted or described. Happiness is ours if we do not have to learn how our electronic machines work. The characters we cherish in fiction do not exist. As individuals or nations we embellish our own histories to make ourselves seem better than we are. Living out our lives within unexamined or contradictory assumptions, we inhabit a fog of dreams and seem to need them.