She was outside of her age in many ways. “Do not be taken in by time,” she once said, “and imagine that history—and especially intellectual history—is linear.” She was high-minded, self-sufficient, European. And as I write those words, I stop, because I hear in my head something she once taught us in class: “And remember, whenever you see a character in a novel, let alone a biography or history book, reduced and neatened into three adjectives, always distrust that description.” It is a rule of thumb I have tried to obey.
