The most important thing to write about “Elementary, my dear Watson” was of course overlooked.  Here it is: it’s typical that the stream of memories come after seeing a movie devoted to the life of Sherlock Holmes.  That’s what I liked and admired the most in that piece.  Connecting these two moments — the very idea of coming out of a movie theatre and deciding not to let the associations fly by without more ado.  Deciding to write them down.  And publish them.  Share them.

There are other examples of this particular style one decides to give to the life of the mind.  Call it the sharing style.  David Lodge, for example, is famous for his books making fun of university life.  I think he’s done more damage than good, despite all the good laughs that are there to be enjoyed.  Elain Scarry is on a better, slower track with this judgment: “a university is among the precious things that can be destroyed.”  Stimulated by Dick’s work, I’ve decided to reread the novel “On Beauty” by Zadie Smith, where, if I haven’t forgotten everything about it, there is much praise of the beauty of life in and around an american campus.

Then there is something else, something more difficult, something that will take up a huge amount of time.  There is an experimental college in California called Deep Springs.  It was founded in 1917 by L.L. Nunn, who was the headmaster until his death in 1926.  This is, in itself, a fascinating story of someone taking responsibility for the education of young engineers so as to provide America with a nation-wide electric grid network, amidst fierce and cutthroat competition from the likes of Tom Edison!  But the Elghammer effect only kicks in when you realise that the work of memory and judgment (somewhere on the spectrum between deductive and inductive judgment!) was done by a student of Deep Springs, who couldn’t get on with his life without telling the story of that school in all its glory and into the dark recesses of everything that otherwise would not be told.  The student’s name is William T. Vollmann.  And the novel with so much “information” or, rather, memory material, is called “You Bright and Risen Angels.”  1987.  Little of Vollmann’s subsequent work has anything to do with this first novel, which threw everyone for a loop, because of its ambition and because of its simplicity.  There are  only good guys and vilains in this novel, and no stops in between.  Like in the New Testament.   Let your yes be a yes, and your no a no.  You’re either with me or against me.  The literary critics did not appreciate that at all.

Most people today remember the novel as a fictional history of the information technology revolution, and especially of the huge importance of video games within that revolution.  That’s true as far as it goes, but, following the Elghammer effect, the reader suspects that this doesn’t go far enough.  The video game and the computer run on electricity, and electricity is a story as big as the great outdoors of the USA!  Bigger than the story of trans-continental railroads.  And, at this level, in this corner, sitting in your reading chair watching the dust fall onto a desk, it is the story of a man who can no longer count on anyone but himself to solve the problem of training and education young people so that they can withstand all the hardships involved in delivering electricity into everyone’s household!  The gamers are blissfully ignorant of the ground beneath their feet, and at their fingertips.  Vollmann is many things, but he’s not ignorant.  And out of college, he had a story to tell.