My title for this post is a joke. I’m not sure there is anyone alive today qualified to write a sequel to Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, an astonishing survey of the literature of Western civilization and its spiritual-moral-humanistic underpinnings.

Just for starters, Auerbach apologizes that he can’t read the Russian novelists in the original language, which he considers an embarrassing flaw in no way compensated for the fact that he did read the original Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and English of the other books he considers—and not only the modern iterations thereof but in all their chronological variety.

He also apologizes that, because he had to write this book in exile in Istanbul, he didn’t have his library to hand, so he had to work from memory.

So, let me admit that I am not worthy even to untie the straps of this scholar’s sandals.

That said, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. This was such an amazing book that I want to record my thoughts about it, and also offer some speculations about what it implies for where literature has gone since he left off his story in the early twentieth century…