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One’s tolerance for discursion will be tested here.

There is a long, unnecessary discursion into reclaiming the language of “darkness,” for example, that comes, one might feel, at the expense of more valuable, concrete information on what it might mean to care for a person with dementia, or to reconcile the diagnosis for oneself.

Or, he will go on another discursion about slats and concrete and what somebody’s cousin Pete told him and the moment will be wasted and the next time he says he wants to address the nation it will get yawns.

The line comes in the middle of a short discursion on the nature of sleep, accompanied by a photo of a boy sleeping, Christ-like, on a wooden table, and Cole doesn’t spend much time elaborating on Calvin’s quip, but it speaks to a central preoccupation in the book: the nature of truth, and the power of the fragment.

The discursion is what lends the book its power and keeps the reader turning its pages.