I am aware that I have taken on a difficult task here: attention to the past is a hard sell. I want to argue that you can’t understand the place and time you’re in by immersion; the opposite’s true. You have to step out and away and back and forward, and you have to do it regularly. Then you come back to the here and now, and say: Ah. That’s how it is. But maybe 2 percent of the people I encounter are willing even to think about this possibility.
