Topic

Secret

Secrets in this collection divide roughly into two kinds: the strategic and the metaphysical. Disraeli's secret of success is constancy to purpose — a public recipe that everyone knows and few follow. Einstein's secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources — a confession dressed as advice. Tacitus notices that forbidden things have a secret charm, which is as true of information as of anything else. Shaw's instruction to search funny things carefully for a hidden truth gives the collection its methodology: comedy conceals. Karr's observation that if men knew what women think they'd be twenty times more audacious, and Shakespeare's warning that they who do not show their love do not love — both turn secrets into problems of concealment that work against their keepers. Vergil's line about each of us bearing our own hell appears under secrecy rather than pain, which changes it: the private hell is the one we carry without telling anyone. The collection suggests that most secrets are not grand revelations. They are habits of concealment so old we have forgotten what we are hiding.