All of us should strive â as Sartre advises â to engage with the books of our own time. At the very least, albeit sometimes wearyingly so, they remind us of how much in our world needs fixing. After all, itâs hard to fault Marxâs activist observation that âthe philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.â Yet the books of the past, besides adding to our understanding, offer something we also need: repose, refreshment and renewal. They help us keep going through dark times, they lift our spirits, they comfort us. Which means that I also strongly agree with the poet John Ashbery, who once wrote, âI am aware of the pejorative associations of the word âescapist,â but I insist that we need all the escapism we can get and even that isnât going to be enough.â
Michael Dirda, Why read old books? A case for the classic, the unusual, the neglected.



















