Hmmm. No one told me about this. What's it all about?

It's right up your—I mean, our—alley. It's going to be a poignant dramatization of the importance of the reader in the production of meaning in a book.

Dramatization?

Yes, well, we plan to project an enormous image of our guru, Hans-Georg Gadamer, onto a screen and then perform a free-form dance in black leotards, and finally break the fourth wall by telling the audience that if it weren't for them, we wouldn't exist.

So it's existential?

No, silly. The "we" that wouldn't exist represents books. I forgot to tell you that.

How does it end?

Well, we have a man on stilts enter the stage and trample all of the books. See, he represents the implied reader.

The who?

The implied reader. That reader all writers imagine exists when they write.

Wow. Okay. I'm in... I guess.

Thanks, bro.

I'll never forget the day the media dredged up my unfortunate Nazi past. For shame!

No doubt, it's been a rough few days. Who'd think that stuff that happened in Estonia fifty years ago would rear its ugly head today?

Word.

They were complicated times. People just ignore that I wasn't convicted of anything.

All I know is that we are just the ones who were caught. There are plenty of German academics who got off scot-free.

Word.

You think everything is a catastrophe.

Are you saying I'm the boy who called wolf?

No. I'm just saying that you call everything a catastrophe. Because that's what you do. That's what you are known for doing. Didn't you say: that history occurs is a catastrophe?

Well, yes.

What did you mean, anyway?

I was talking about the disasters under Hitler. My point is that humans make these things happen. It doesn't happen to us; it happens because of us. Human beings create catastrophe.

I'm afraid I agree. We are actors in our history, not corks bobbing on a sea of destiny…