I started reading the Bell Jar. I always assumed it was poetry but it is a novel, a great one. I did not expect to read first person accounts of electric shock therapy, dybbuks or stream of consciousness snapshots that mix the late 1950s and mental health so perfectly. It is easy to think times and places before you are ancient and too far away to be comprehensible but great art mitigates the vast space making everything as close as yesterday. When I listen to Bach or read Bulgakov I know on some level those people couldn’t know what we of the future would be like but they could imagine us getting their message and enjoying what they intended. That is enormous and miraculous.