[Steiner] is a very clever man (in which he reminds me of one very clever man in a Cornish town, whose story can wait for a paragraph or two). He is prodigiously informed (a fact his writing parades). If some colleague of his told me that, between anthropology, linguistics and archaeology, he kept a triple diary in Tupi-Guarani, Old Friesian, and Tocharian, I would believe it. He is adroit in [the essays collected in In Bluebeard's Castle]; you think 'I've got him', and up he comes with your own objection. Am I being motivated personally? Could I be exaggerating? Or misinterpreting? But was it ever different? Of course 'there is a good deal of millenarian naïveté and recoil from adult politics in the current passion for the environment. Nevertheless' … Of course (you are just going to complain about his line by line performance) 'never have the meta-languages...