I always enjoyed the story of how Ludwig Wittgenstein, after delivering a four-hour lecture to his class in Cambridge on the intricacies of some logical problem, would then go to a movie in town (his favorite genre was the American Western) and sit in the front row, letting the images inundate his overheated brain.

There are a few books one encounters in the course of one’s life that prove to be transformative. In most cases, one is not expecting this. But it happens, and you know that you’ll never look at the world in quite the same way. For me, one text that was particularly life-changing was a slender volume by the classical scholar John Finley, entitled Four Stages of Greek Thought. It was as if, within its pages, I discovered what kind of writer I wanted to be; even, what kind of life I wanted to lead.

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