You read a ‘good’ story from the 1930s and find that somehow the world has passed it by. Its inner workings and emphases are somehow misshapen. It’s answering questions in its tone and form that we are no longer asking. And yet the Gaussian curve4 argues that this is true—that most of us are so habituated to the current moment that what we do will fade and lose its power and just be an historical relic, if that.
