If I had to choose my favorite essay in this collection, today it would probably be “Toothpicks” (tomorrow “Beans and Baroque,” the day after that “Socks Optional”). When I started writing “Toothpicks” I didn’t know I was going to wander into the social and cultural history of the toothpick. (Portuguese nuns, it is argued, make the world’s most highly prized ones.) And I didn’t know I would stumble upon the fact that “Hang On, Sloopy” is the official rock song of the state of Ohio—by an act of the 116th Ohio General Assembly—and that the Ohio State University marching band plays it on the football field at every home game. What I did know was that the look of my wife’s hair, as I walked behind her that morning, would come up in the conversation, as would Dennis Cockrum’s scary toothpick trick.
That essay, like many in this new collection, exhibits an “all-over-ness” in which one detail leads to another, then another, then another—mirroring the free-associative faculty that naturally occurs in our thinking. I picture Copernicus at his favorite wine bar in Ferrara, looking up at the sky and wondering. Much like I wonder, on warm mornings walking my neighborhood. Much like I’ll wonder, a few months later, standing in the Nevada desert and looking up—what’s out there? Why are we here? What does it matter?