On the question of background reading for the Read

[Mark Kohut]

"Dixon now must be his own stern Uncle, and smack himself upon the Pate at
any sign of unfocusing."

SMACK.

How could I forget one almost essential book as background? One I brought
up in the last Read;
one I have evidently created a false memory about, a memory that TRP
borrowed the book from Ian McEwan,
a 'fact' if it is one that is not on any map I can find.

Remember, TRP may be our greatest novelist of* ideas, *and he plays with
them like rubber duckies in a bath,
and one major source, I'm sure is

T*he Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers. *

Another kinda deep weblike background is *The Great Chain of Being. *

Forget reading the documents about the founding of the United States of
America. You know that in whatever
way you do. If M & D is some kind of idea map, the foundational documents
of the USA are just the parchment,
not any kind of reading guide, I say more focussedly. The
taken-for-granted, without which TRP could not set off
his vision of reality against.

I suggest.
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