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  • The American Scholar

    The Country & the Country

    Mar 01, 2022 4 minutes
    CULLEN MURPHY

    A FEW WEEKS AGO, a long-ago conversation with a friend came to mind as I tried to bring some order to my bookshelves. My friend was not yet of a certain age, but he had, he confessed, crossed a line: he had made a transition from the curating stage of life to the editing stage. He was no longer collecting; he was deaccessioning. I lack his wisdom and maturity, and rather than editing as I sorted, I instead paused to thumb through and scan. And then I came across a book that made me stop and reread: (2009), by the British writer China Miéville. It is a police procedural

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