The Ghost Ship

by Richard Middleton

  The Story Of A Book

  I. THE WRITER

  The history of a book must necessarily begin with the history of itsauthor, for surely in these enlightened days neither the youngest northe oldest of critics can believe that works of art are found undergooseberry-bushes or in the nests of storks. In truth, I am by nomeans sure that everybody knew this before the publication of "TheMan Shakespeare," and for the sake of a mystified posterity it may bewell to explain that there was once a school of criticism thatthought it indecent to pry into that treasure-house of individualityfrom which, if we reject the nursery hypotheses mentioned above, itis clearly obvious that authors derive their works. That the dramamust needs be closely related to the dramatist is just one of thosesimple discoveries that invariably elude the subtle professionalmind; but in this wiser hour I may be permitted to assume that theauthor was the conscious father of his novel, and that he did notfind it surprisingly in his pocket one morning, like a bad shillingtaken in change from the cabman overnight.

  Before he published his novel at the ripe age of thirty-seven theauthor had lived an irreproachable and gentlemanly life. Born with atleast a German-silver spoon in his mouth, he passed, after a normallyeventful childhood, through a respectable public school, and spentseveral agreeable years at Cambridge without taking a degree. He thenwent into his uncle's office in the City, where he idled daily fromten to four, till in due course he was admitted to a partnership,which enabled him to reduce his hours of idleness to eleven to three.These details become important when we reflect that from hischildhood on the author had a great deal of time at his disposal. Ifhe had been entirely normal, he would have accepted the conventionsof the society to which he belonged, and devoted himself to motoring,bridge, and the encouragement of the lighter drama. But somedeep-rooted habit of his childhood, or even perhaps some remotehereditary taint, led him to spend an appreciable fraction of hisleisure time in the reading of works of fiction. Unlike most loversof light literature, he read with a certain mental concentration, andwas broad-minded enough to read good novels as well as bad ones.

  It is a pleasant fact that it is impossible to concentrate one's mindon anything without in time becoming wiser, and in the course ofyears the author became quite a skilful critic of novels. From thefirst he had allowed his reading to colour his impressions of life,and had obediently lived in a world of blacks and whites, of heroesand heroines, of villains and adventuresses, until the gratefuldiscovery of the realistic school of fiction permitted him to believethat men and women were for the most part neither good nor bad, buttabby. Moreover, the leisurely reading of many sentences had givenhim some understanding of the elements of style. He perceived thatsome combinations of words were illogical, and that others wereunlovely to the ear; and at the same time he acquired a vocabularyand a knowledge of grammar and punctuation that his earlier educationhad failed to give him. He read new novels at his writing-table, andtook pleasure in correcting the mistakes of their authors in ink.When he had done this, he would hand them to his wife, who alwaysread the end first, and, indeed, rarely pursued her investigation ofa book beyond the last chapter.

  We buy knowledge with illusions, and pay a high price for it, for theacquirement of quite a small degree of wisdom will deprive us of alarge number of pleasant fancies. So it was with the author, whofound his joy in novel-reading diminishing rapidly as his criticalknowledge increased. He was no longer able to lose himself betweenthe covers of a romance, but slid his paper-knife between the pagesof a book with an unwholesome readiness to be irritated by theignorance and folly of the novelist. His destructive criticism ofworks of fiction became so acute that it was natural that hisunlettered friends should suggest that he himself ought to write anovel. For a long while he was content to receive the flatteringsuggestion with a reticent smile that masked his conviction thatthere was a difference between criticism and creation. But as he grewolder the imperfections in the books he read ceased to give him thethrill of the successful explorer in sight of the expected, and timebegan to trickle too slowly through his idle fingers. One day he satdown and wrote "Chapter I." at the head of a sheet of quarto paper.

  It seemed to him that the difficulty was only one of selection, andhe wrote two-thirds of a novel with a breathless ease of creationthat made him marvel at himself and the pitiful struggles of lessgifted novelists. Then in a moment of insight he picked up hismanuscript and realised that what he had written was childishlycrude. He had felt his story while he wrote it, but somehow or otherhe had failed to get his emotions on paper, and he saw quite clearlythat it was worse and not better than the majority of the books whichhe had held up to ridicule.

  There was a certain doggedness in his character that might have madehim a useful citizen but for that unfortunate hereditary spoon, andhe wrote "Chapter I." at the head of a new sheet of quarto paper longbefore the library fire had reached the heart of his first lucklessmanuscript. This time he wrote more slowly, and with a waningconfidence that failed him altogether when he was about half-waythrough. Reading the fragment dispassionately he thought there weregood pages in it, but, taken as a whole, it was unequal, and movedforward only by fits and starts. He began again with his latemanuscript spread about him on the table for reference. At the fifthattempt he succeeded in writing a whole novel.

  In the course of his struggles he had acquired a philosophy ofcomposition. Especially he had learned to shun those enchanted hourswhen the labour of creation became suspiciously easy, for he hadfound by experience that the work he did in these moments ofinspiration was either bad in itself or out of key with the precedingchapters. He thought that inspiration might be useful to poets orwriters of short stories, but personally as a novelist he found it anuisance. By dint of hard work, however, he succeeded in eliminatingits evil influence from his final draft. He told himself that he hadno illusions as to the merits of his book. He knew he was not a manof genius, but he knew also that the grammar and the punctuation ofhis novel were far above the average of such works, and although hecould not read Sir Thomas Browne or Walter Pater with pleasure, hefelt sure that his book was written in a straightforward andgentlemanly style. He was prepared to be told that his use of thecolon was audacious, and looked forward with pleasure to an agreeablecontroversy on the question.

  He read his book to his friends, who made suggestions that would haveinvolved its rewriting from one end to the other. He read it to hisenemies, who told him that it was nearly good enough to publish; heread it to his wife, who said that it was very nice, and that it wastime to dress for dinner. No one seemed to realise that it was themost important thing he had ever done in his life. This quickened hiseagerness to get it published--an eagerness only tempered by a veryreal fear of those knowing dogs, the critics. He could not forgetthat he had criticised a good many books himself in terms that wouldhave made the authors abandon their profession if they had but heardhis strictures; and he had read notices in the papers that would havemade him droop with shame if they had referred to any work of his.When these sombre thoughts came to him he would pick up his book andread it again, and in common fairness he had to admit to himself thathe found it uncommonly good.

  One day, after a whole batch of ungrammatical novels had reached himfrom the library, he posted his manuscript to his favouritepublisher. He had heard stories of masterpieces many times rejected,so he did not tell his wife what he had done.

  II. The Sleepy Publisher

  The publisher to whom our author had confided his manuscript stood,like all publishers, at the very head of his profession. His businesswas conducted on sound conservative lines, which means that though hehad regretfully abandoned the three-volume novel for the novelpublished at six shillings, he was not among the intrepidrevolutionaries who were beginning to produce new fiction at a stilllower price. Besides novels he published solid works of biography atthirty-one and six, art books at a guinea, travel books at fifteenshillings, flighty historical works at twelve-an
d-sixpence, and cheapeditions of Montaigne's Essays and "Robinson Crusoe" at a shilling.Some idea of his business methods may be derived from the fact thatit pleased him to reflect that all the other publishers wereproducing exactly the same books as he was. And though he would admitthat the trade had been ruined by competition and the outrageousroyalties demanded by successful authors, and, further, that he madea loss on every separate department of his business, in somemysterious fashion the business as a whole continued to pay him verywell. He left the active part of the management to a confidentialclerk, and contented himself with signing cheques and interviewingauthors.

  With such a publisher the fate of our author's book was never indoubt. If it was lacking in those qualities that might be expected tocommend it to the reading public, it was conspicuously rich in thosemerits that determine the favourable judgment of publishers' readers.It was above all things a gentlemanly book, without violence andwithout eccentricities. It was carefully and grammatically written;but it had not that exotic literary flavour which is so tiresome on along railway journey. It could be put into the hands of anyschoolgirl, and at most would merely send her to sleep. The onlything that could be said against it was that the author's dread ofinspiration had made it grievously dull, but it was the publisher'sopinion that after a glut of sensational fiction the six-shillingpublic had come to regard dullness as the hall-mark of literarymerit. He had no illusions as to its possible success, but, on theother hand, he knew that he could not lose any money on it, so hewrote a letter to the author inviting him to an interview.

  As soon as he had read the letter the author told himself that hehad been certain all along that his book would be accepted.Nevertheless, he went to the interview moved by certain emotionalflutterings against which circumstance had guarded him ever sincehis boyhood. He found this mild excitation of the nervous system byno means unpleasant. It was like digesting a new and subtle liqueurthat made him light-footed and tingled in the tips of his fingers.He recalled a phrase that had greatly pleased him in the early daysof his novel. "As the sun colours flowers, so Art colours life." Itseemed to him that this was beginning to come true, and that lifewas already presenting itself to him in a gayer, brighter dress. Hereached the publisher's office, therefore, in an unwontedlyreceptive mood, and was tremendously impressed by the rudeness ofthe clerks, who treated authors as mendicants and expressed theiropinion of literature by handling books as if they were bundles offirewood.

  The publisher looked at him under heavy eyelids, recognised hisposition in the social scale, and reflected with satisfaction thathis acquaintances could be relied on to purchase at least a hundredcopies. The interview did not at all take the lines that the authorin his innocence had expected, and in a surprisingly short space oftime he found himself bowed out, with the duplicate of a contract inthe pocket of his overcoat. In the outer office the confidentialclerk took him in hand and led him to the door of an enormous cellar,lit by electricity and filled from one end to the other with balesand heaps of books. "Books!" said the confidential clerk, with thesmile of a gamekeeper displaying his hand-reared pheasants. "Thereare a great many," the author said timidly.

  "Of course, we do not keep our stock here," the clerk explained."These are just samples." It was sometimes necessary to remindinexperienced writers that the publication of their first book wasonly a trivial incident in the history of a great publishing house.The author had a sad vision of his novel as a little brick in amonstrous pyramid built of books, and the clerk mentally decided thathe was not the kind of man to turn up every day at the office to askthem how they were getting on.

  The author was a little dazed when he emerged into the street and thesunshine. His book, which an hour before had seemed the mostimportant thing in the world, had, become almost insignificant in thelight of that vast collection of printed matter, and in some subtleway he felt that he had dwindled with it. The publisher had praisedit without enthusiasm and had not specified any of its merits; he hadnot even commented on his fantastic use of the colon. The author hadlived with it now for many months--it had become a part of hispersonality, and he felt that he had betrayed himself in deliveringit into the hands of strangers who could not understand it. He hadthe reticence of the well-bred Englishman, and though he told himselfreassuringly that his novel in no way reflected his private life, hecould not quite overcome the sentiment that it was a little vulgar toallow alien eyes to read the product of his most intimate thoughts.He had really been shocked at the matter-of-fact way in which everyone at the office had spoken of his book, and the sight of all theother books with which it would soon be inextricably confused hademphasised the painful impression. This all seemed to rob theauthor's calling of its presumed distinction, and he looked at themen and women who passed him on the pavement, and wondered whetherthey too had written books.

  This mood lasted for some weeks, at the end of which time he receivedthe proofs, which he read and re-read with real pleasure beforesetting himself to correcting them with meticulous care. He performedthis task with such conscientiousness, and made so many minoralterations--he changed most of those flighty colons to moreconventional semicolons--that the confidential clerk swore terriblywhen he glanced at the proofs before handing them to a boy, withinstructions to remove three-quarters of the offending emendations.A week or two later there happened one of those strange littleincidents that make modern literary history. It was a bright, sunnyafternoon; the publisher had been lunching with the star author ofthe firm, a novelist whose books were read wherever the British flagwaved and there was a circulating library to distribute them, andnow, in the warm twilight of the lowered blinds he was enjoyingprofound thoughts, delicately tinted by burgundy and old port. Theshrewdest men make mistakes, and certainly it was hardly wise of theconfidential clerk to choose this peaceful moment to speak about ourauthor's book. "I suppose we shall print a thousand?" he said. "Fivethousand!" ejaculated the publisher. What was he thinking about? Washe filling up an imaginary income-tax statement, or was he trying toestimate the number of butterflies that seemed to float in the ambershadows of the room? The clerk did not know. "I suppose you mean onethousand, sir?" he said gently. The publisher was now wide awake. Hehad lost all his butterflies, and he was not the man to allow himselfto be sleepy in the afternoon. "I said five thousand!" The clerk bithis lip and left the room.

  The author never heard of this brief dialogue; probably if he hadbeen present he would have missed its significance. He would neverhave connected it with the flood of paragraphs that appeared in thePress announcing that the acumen of the publisher had discovered anew author of genius--paragraphs wherein he was compared withDickens, Thackeray, Flaubert, Richardson, Sir Walter Besant, ThomasBrowne, and the author of "An Englishwoman's Love-letters." As itwas, it did not occur to him to wonder why the publisher should spendso much money on advertising a book of which he had seemed to havebut a half-hearted appreciation. After all it was his book, and theauthor felt that it was only natural that as the hour of publicationdrew near the world of letters should show signs of a dignifiedexcitement.

  III. The Critic Errant

  There are some emotions so intimate that the most intrepid writerhesitates to chronicle them lest it should be inferred that hehimself is in the confessional. We have endeavoured to show ourauthor as a level-headed English-man with his nerves well undercontrol and an honest contempt for emotionalism in the stronger sex;but his feelings in the face of the first little bundle of reviewssent him by the press-cutting agency would prove this portraitincomplete. He noticed with a vague astonishment that the flimsyscraps of paper were trembling in his fingers like banknotes in thehands of a gambler, and he laid them down on the breakfast-table indisgust of the feminine weakness. This unmistakable proof that he hadwritten a book, a real book, made him at once happy and uneasy. Thesefragments of smudged prints were his passport into a new anddelightful world; they were, it might be said, the name of hisdestination in the great republic of letters, and yet he
hesitated tolook at them. He heard of the curious blindness of authors that madeit impossible for them to detect the most egregious failings in theirown work, and it occurred to him that this might be his malady. Why:had he published his book? He felt at that moment that he had takentoo great a risk. It would have been so easy to have had it privatelyprinted and contented himself with distributing it among his friends.But these people were paid for writing about books, these critics whohad sent Keats to his gallipots and Swinburne to his fig-tree, mightwell have failed to have recognised that his book was sacred, becauseit was his own.

  When he had at last achieved a fatalistic tranquillity, he once morepicked up the notices, and this time he read them through carefully.The _Rutlandshire Gazette_ quoted Shakespeare, the _Thrums Times_compared him with Christopher North, the _Stamford-bridge Herald_thought that his style resembled that of Macaulay, but they wereunanimous in praising his book without reservation. It seemed to theauthor that he was listening to the authentic voice of fame. Herested his chin on his hand and dreamed long dreams.

  He could afford in this hour of his triumph to forget the annoyanceshe had undergone since his book was first accepted. The publisher,with a large first edition to dispose of, had been rather more thanfirm with the author. He had changed the title of the book from"Earth's Returns"--a title that had seemed to the author dignifiedand pleasantly literary--to "The Improbable Marquis," which seemedto him to mean nothing at all. Moreover, instead of giving the booka quiet and scholarly exterior, he had bound it in boards of aninjudicious heliotrope, inset with a nasty little coloured pictureof a young woman with a St. Bernard dog. This binding revolted theauthor, who objected, with some reason, that in all his book therewas no mention of a dog of that description, or, indeed, of any dogat all. The book was wrapped in an outer cover that bore arecommendation of its contents, starting with a hideous splitinfinitive and describing it as an exquisite social comedy writtenfrom within. On the whole it seemed to the author that his book wasflying false and undesirable colours, and since art lies outside thedomesticities, he was hardly relieved when his wife told him thatshe thought the binding was very pretty. The author had shuddered noless at the little paragraphs that the publisher had inserted in thenewspapers concerning his birth and education, wherein he wasbracketed with other well-known writers whose careers at theUniversity had been equally undistinguished. But now that, likeByron, he found himself famous among the bacon and eggs, he was inno mood to remember these past vexations. As soon as he had finishedbreakfast he withdrew himself to his study and wrote half an essayon the Republic of Letters.

  In a country wherein fifteen novels--or is it fifty?--arepublished every day of the year, the publisher's account of thegoods he sells is bound to have a certain value. Money talks,as Mr. Arnold Bennett once observed--indeed today it is grownquite garrulous--and when a publisher spends a lot of money onadvertising a book, the inference is that some one believes thebook to be good. This will not secure a book good notices, butit will secure it notices of some kind or other, and that, asevery publisher knows, is three-quarters of the battle. Theaverage critic today is an old young man who has not failed inliterature or art, possibly because he has not tried toaccomplish anything in either. By the time he has acquired someskill in criticism he has generally ceased to be a critic,through no fault of his own, but through sheer weariness ofspirit. When a man is very young he can dance upon everyone whohas not written a masterpiece with a light heart, but afterthis period of joyous savagery there follows fatigue and acertain pity. The critic loses sight of his first magnificentstandards, and becomes grateful for even the smallest merit inthe books he is compelled to read. Like a mother giving apowder to her child, he is at pains to disguise his timidcensure with a teaspoonful of jam. As the years pass by hebecomes afraid of these books that continue to appear inunreasonable profusion, and that have long ago destroyed hisfaith in literature, his love of reading, his sense of humour,and the colouring matter of his hair. He realises, with adreadful sense of the infinite, that when he is dead and buriedthis torrent of books will overwhelm the individualities of hissuccessors, bound like himself to a lifelong examination of theinsignificant.

  Timidity is certainly the note of modern criticism, which is rarelyroused to indignation save when confronted by the infrequent outrageof some intellectual anarchist. If the critics of the more importantjournals were not so enthusiastic as their provincial confreres,they were at least gentle with "The Improbable Marquis." A critic ofgenius would have said that such books were not worth writing, stillless worth reading. An outspoken critic would have said that it wastoo dull to be an acceptable presentation of a life that we all findinteresting. As it was, most of the critics praised the style inwhich it was written because it was quite impossible to call it anenthralling or even an entertaining book. Some of the youngercritics, who still retained an interest in their own personalities,discovered that its vacuity made it a convenient mirror by means ofwhich they would display the progress of their own genius. In commongratitude they had to close these manifestations of their merit witha word or two in praise of the book they were professing to review."The Improbable Marquis" was very favourably received by the Pressin general.

  It was, as the publisher made haste to point out in hisadvertisements, a book of the year, and, reassured by its flippantexterior, the libraries and the public bought it with avidity. Theauthor pasted his swollen collection of newspaper-cuttings into analbum, and carefully revised his novel in case a second editionshould be called for. There was one review which he had read moreoften than any of the others, and nevertheless he hesitated toinclude it in his collection. "This book," wrote the anonymousreviewer, "is as nearly faultless a book may be that possesses nopositive merit. It differs only from seven-eighths of the novelsthat are produced today in being more carefully written. The authorhad nothing to say, and he has said it." That was all, threemalignant lines in a paper of no commercial importance, the sort ofthing that was passed round the publisher's office with anappreciative chuckle. In the face of the general amiability of thePress, such a notice in an obscure journal could do the book noharm.

  Only the author sat hour after hour in his study with that diminutivescrap of paper before him on the table, and wondered if it wastrue.

  IV. Fame

  It was some little time before the public, the mysterious section ofthe public that reads works of fiction, discovered that thepublisher, aided by the normal good-humour of the critics, hadpersuaded them to sacrifice some of their scant hours of intellectualrecreation on a work of portentous dullness. Therefor the literaryaudience has its sense of humour--they amused themselves for a whileby recommending the book to their friends, and the sales creptsteadily up to four thousand, and there stayed with an unmistakableair of finality. If the book had had any real literary merit its lifewould have started at that point, for the weary comments of reviewersand the strident outcries of publishers tend to obscure rather thanreveal the permanent value of a book. But six months afterpublication "The Improbable Marquis" was completely forgotten, saveby the second-hand booksellers, who found themselves embarrassed witha number of books for which no one seemed anxious to pay six-pence,in spite of the striking heliotrope binding. The publisher, who wasaware of this circumstance, offered the author five hundred copies atcost price, and the author bought them, and sent them to publiclibraries, without examining the motive for his action too closely.There were moments when he regarded the success of his book withsuspicion. He would have preferred the praise that had greeted it tohave been less violent and more clearly defined. Of all thecriticisms, the only one that lingered in his mind was the curtcomment, "The author had nothing to say, and he has said it." Hethought it was unfair, but he had remembered it. At the same time, inexamining his own character, he could not find that masterfulnessthat seemed to him necessary in a great man. But for the most part hewas content to accept his new honours with a placid satisfaction, andto smile genially upon
a world that was eager to credit him withqualities that possibly he did not possess. For if his book was nolonger read his fame as an author seemed to be established on a rock.Society, with a larger S than that which he had hitherto adorned, wasdelighted to find after two notable failures that genius could stillbe presentable, and the author was rather more than that. He wasrich, he had that air of the distinguished army officer which fallsso easily to those who occupy the pleasant position of sleepingpartner in the City, and he had just the right shade of amusedmodesty with which to meet inquiries as to his literary intentions.In a word, he was an author of whom any country--even France, thatprolific parent of presentable authors--would have been proud. Evenhis wife, who had thought it an excellent joke that her husbandshould have written a book, had to take him seriously as an authorwhen she found that their social position was steadily improving.With feminine tact she gave him a fountain-pen on his birthday, fromwhich he was meant to conclude that she believed in his mission as anartist.

  Meanwhile, with the world at his feet, the author spent anappreciable part of his time in visiting the second-hand bookshopsand buying copies of his book absurdly cheap. He carried these waifshome and stored them in an attic secretly, for he would have found ithard to explain his motives to the intellectually childless. In thefirst flush of authorship he had sent a number of presentation copiesof his book to writers whom he admired, and he noticed withoutbitterness that some of these volumes with their neatly turnedinscriptions were coming back to him through this channel. At all thesecond-hand bookshops he saw long-haired young men looking over thebooks without buying them, and he thought these must be authors, buthe was too shy to speak to them, though he had a great longing toknow other writers. He wanted to ask them questions concerning theirmethods of work, for he was having trouble with his second book. Hehad read an article in which the writer said that the great fault ofmodern fiction was that authors were more concerned to produce goodchapters than to produce good books. It seemed to him that in hisfirst book he had only aimed at good sentences, but he knew no onewith whom he could discuss such matters.

  One day he found a copy of "The Improbable Marquis" in the CharingCross Road, and was glancing through it with absent-minded interest,when a voice at his elbow said, "I shouldn't buy that if I were you,sir. It's no good!" He looked up and saw a wild young man, withbright eyes and an untidy black beard. "But it's mine; I wrote it,"cried the author. The young man stared at him in dismay. "I'm sorry;I didn't know," he blurted out, and faded away into the crowd. Theauthor gazed after him wistfully, regretting that he had not hadpresence of mind enough to ask him to lunch. Perhaps the young mancould have told him how he ought to write his second book.

  For somehow or other, at the very moment when his literary positionseemed most secure in the eyes of his wife and his friends, theauthor had lost all confidence in his own powers. He shut himself upin his study every night, and was supposed by an admiring and almosttimorous household to be producing masterpieces, when in reality hewas conducting a series of barren skirmishes between the criticaland the creative elements of his nature. He would write a chapter ortwo in a fine fury of composition, and then would read what he hadwritten with intense disgust. He felt that his second book ought tobe better than his first, and he doubted whether he would even beable to write anything half so good. In his hour of disillusionmenthe recalled the anonymous critic who had treated "The ImprobableMarquis" with such scant respect, and he wrote to him asking him toexpand his judgment. He was prepared to be wounded by the answer,but the form it took surprised him. In reply to his temperate andcourteous letter the critic sent a postcard bearing only five shortwords--"Why did you write it?"

  This was bad manners, but the author was sensible enough to see thatit might be good criticism, especially as he found some difficulty inanswering the question. Why had he written a book? Not for money, orfor fame, or to express a personality of which he saw no reason to beproud. All his friends had said that he ought to write a novel, andhe had thought that he could write a better one than the average. Buthe had to admit that such motives seemed to him insufficient. Therewas, perhaps, some mysterious force that drove men to create works ofart, and the critic had seen that his book had lacked this necessaryimpulse. In the light of this new theory the author was roused by asense of injustice. He felt that it should be possible for anyone towrite a good book if they took sufficient pains, and he set himselfto work again with a savage and unproductive energy.

  It seemed to him that in spite of his effort to bear in mind that thewhole should be greater than any part, his chapters broke up intosentences and his sentences into forlorn and ungregarious words. Whenhe looked to his first book for comfort he found the same horridphenomenon taking place in its familiar pages. Sometimes when he wasdisheartened by his fruitless efforts he slipped out into thestreets, fixing his attention on concrete objects to rest his tiredmind. But he could not help noticing that London had discovered thesecret which made his intellectual life a torment. The streets weremore than a mere assemblage of houses, London herself was more than atangled skein of streets, and overhead heaven was more than ameeting-place of individual stars. What was this secret that madewords into a book, houses into cities, and restless and measurablestars into an unchanging and immeasurable universe?