“Let me ask you what brought you to Spinoza? Is it that he was a Jew?”
“No, your honour. I didn’t know who or what he was when I first came across the book - they don’t exactly love him in the synagogue, if you’ve read the story of his life. I found it in a junkyard in a nearby town, paid a kopek and left cursing myself for wasting money hard to come by. Later I read through a few pages and kept on going as though there were a whirlwind at my back. As I say, I didn’t understand every word but when you’re dealing with such ideas you feel as though you were taking a witch’s ride. After that I wasn’t the same man . . .”
“Would you mind explaining what you think Spinoza’s work means? In other words if it’s a philosophy what does it state?”
“That’s not easy to say . . . The book means different things according to the subject of the chapters, though it’s all united underneath. But what I think it means is that he was out to make a free man of himself - as much as one can according to his philosophy, if you understand my meaning - by thinking things through and connecting everything up, if you’ll go along with that, your honour.”
“That isn’t a bad approach, through the man rather than the work. But . . .”
Malamud, The Fixer
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