We're the opposite of Job's comforters, W. notes, it's true: we do not seek to discourage while offering solace. We're the encouragers of thought! Thought's enthusiasts! What thinker, in our midst, have we failed to cheer on?
We were there on the front row with our notebooks, furiously writing. The thinker spoke, and we wrote. And then after, knowing the audience's reaction could not fail to disappoint, could not fail to leave the thinker feeling yet more isolated, yet more alone, we all but bore him upon our shoulders, cheering. We all but deafened him with our cries.
What did you mean by this point, or that one?, we ask him. We go through our notebooks. What did you mean by this, or that? Stupid as we are, our interest flatters him. We're like a dry run, in our stupidity, for an encounter with a fellow thinker, an ally of thought, in conversation with whom our thinker could rise to his true vocation.
And what would we do, if, with our thinker, another thinker came along? What, if a conversation between thinkers truly began, if idea met with idea like eagles rising into the air? We wouldn't get out our notebooks: W. makes me promise that. I wouldn't take out my camera, my infernal camera: W. makes me promise that, too. And we wouldn't chatter; we wouldn't say a thing: W. doesn't have to tell me that.
Mute, awestruck, we would only listen as to the tongue of angels, to what we couldn't understand.
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