The Key To All Mythologies

I show W. a book of photos of Deleuze and Guattari from the 70s, with their flares and long hair. Look at them! They were having a good time. – 'They had ideas', W. says. 'They were changing the world'.

Anti-Oedipus has just been published as a Penguin Classic. – 'It's being fossilised', W. says. 'Antiquated!' How many times have I read that book? It's one of the few books I have read, and I read it again and again, each summer. W.'s always amazed.

'It's like Casaubon's Key to All Mythologies to you, isn't it?' It's like the cut wide bird of an augur. – 'You think you can divine the future from its guts. You can see anything there. Anything at all'. In the end, it's no better than reading tea leaves. - 'It doesn't mean anything to you, does it? Have you ever really read a page?'

But is W. any better? Does he understand, really understand anything he reads? But he feels the need to read it, as I do. He feels the need to protect it, to fill his notebooks with quotations and to become a walking, talking library of philosophy, like one of the book lovers of Farenheit 451.