The Books of Jacob

by Olga Tokarczuk

Asher Rubin thinks that most people are truly idiots, and that it is human stupidity that is ultimately responsible for introducing sadness into the world. It isn’t a sin or a trait with which human beings are born, but a false view of the world, a mistaken evaluation of what is seen by our eyes. Which is why people perceive every thing in isolation, each object separate from the rest. Real wisdom lies in linking everything together—that’s when the true shape of all of it emerges.

He said that there are four types of readers. There is the reading sponge, the reading funnel, the reading colander, and the reading sieve. The sponge absorbs everything it comes into contact with; and it is evident he remembers much of it later, too. But he is not able to filter out what is most important. The funnel takes in what he reads at one end, while at the other, everything he’s read pours out of him. The strainer lets through the wine and keeps the sediment; he ought not to read at all—it would be infinitely better if he simply dedicated himself to some manual trade. The sieve, on the other hand, separates out the chaff to give a result of only the finest grains. “I want you to be like sieves, and to discard all that is not good or interesting,” Isohar would say to us.

I have often thought about how success and good fortune can suddenly transform into misery and humiliation.

The bans have little effect. They only work at the start, but then human nature with its long finger begins to poke a hole in them, first a little one and then, when it encounters no resistance, a larger and larger one. Until finally the hole is bigger than what isn’t the hole. That’s how it goes with any interdiction.