Adam and Eve

   What book I happen to read is hei wie der Würfel fällt, (hey as the die falls) as the song would have it. I forgot how I got to the Kissinger biography; Mark gave me the Perl Calder volume, but before that I read Stephen Greenblatt’s Swerve and now his Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve.

   For me, Greenblatt’s projects hit the spot, though that is not as flattering as it seems. I have an allergy to free-wheeling acounts of actual happenings (the allergy is to bullshit), but I’m no longer prepared to plough through carefully documented narratives. So, voila. Greenblatt will not be flattered by my praising him as an author for semi-literates, though I am sure he knows that’s where the money is to be made.

   I am now reading his book on Adam and Eve and what happened to them in the centuries after their (ficticious) lives. Interesting if not always edifying. I’m at the point (around the time of the discovery of America) when it became clear (to most) that that there were vastly more people than the offspring of Adam and Eve. That huge increase of the canvas conveniently made Adam and Eve into the forefathers of just the Jews. I’m looking forward to further discussions, but I’m not optimistic.