Gertrude Stein Question*

At the dawn of mankind, Trivia was a beautiful tiny blob of ectoplasm that quickly became omnivorous—a little piece of it on the tip of a finger could soon open all the windows of the world.

Bacterial Categories of Trivia quickly morphed: Of Mild Interest is one. Another: Of no interest or importance personally, but perhaps of some import to another person or another group of people who are personally involved or related to the person of note identified in social media, newspaper and popular magazine features, or police and other official reports. Yet another: complete disinterest, or disinterest transferred and morphing into interesting or semi-interesting, new and newly diverse categories of bacterial infection and creation.

And so, Trivia, especially the increasingly high-volume of domestic and international interest in and trafficking of trivial issue, became omnivorous, an all-consuming creature sopping up elements of every culture, great and small, into one beautifully composed, amorphous ectoplasmic cultural universe.

The question then: what’s happening to those of us who would rather read books, yet who also like to indulge in the gathering of huge amounts of trivial material?  The question should be of interest to us all, as many people read not necessarily to know something they didn’t know in the first place but in the hope that the people who are watching them read a book will come to believe that they actually do know something of importance they hadn’t known before.

*’If nobody asked the question, what would the answer be?’ (Gertrude Stein).

Random ectoplasmic sample, a lab gathering, October, 2023. Photo by author.