We live in an age of rapid mass media, television, Internet. They determine our tempo, not books.

Men with secrets tend to be drawn to each other, not because they want to share what they know but because they need the company of the like-minded, the fellow afflicted.

The less there was to see, the harder he looked, the more he saw. (Point Omega)

It is all falling indelibly into the past.

To plot is to live. […] We start out lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that's not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual. Picture a state funeral, Jack. It is all precision, detail, order, design. The nation holds its breath. - (WN 292)

In the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape.

Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else.