In 1942, Stefan Zweig completed his memoirs, The World of Yesterday. The book is an autobiography, sure, but, even more than that, it is an account of Europe from the late 19th century until September 1939. One of the themes of the book is that civilization is fragile, liable to be shattered at any time. Therefore, keep alert. I have written about The World of Yesterday, and related matters, in an essay today, here.

Let’s have some mail. A reader says,

Jay,

. . . I first read these eloquent memoirs about six years ago. I cannot remember when, in the course of my 70 years, I have been so moved by a book, unless it was when, in my twenties, I first read Witness.

It was only two weeks ago that I finished for the first time Zweig’s novel Beware of Pity, which, I think, is surely one of the 20th century’s finest novels. I wonder whether you have read his works of fiction.

Yes. I wrote about Beware of Pity in September, here. And about The Post-Office Girl, a few weeks earlier, here.

From a different reader, about other things:

Mr. Nordlinger,

I was reading your “Political Testimony” today, and the story of your development in politics made me do some quick math in my head. It was almost 20 years ago that I was working for a law firm in Pittsburgh, having just graduated from college. I thought I might want to be an attorney (I’d taken the LSAT). My dad, in his wisdom, said, “Why don’t you go and work at a law firm for a year or two before you go to law school and see if it’s the right career?”

It was great advice. I worked there about a year and left, never thinking about going to law school again.

During that time, I read a lot of National Review Online (one of the websites not blocked by the firm’s web-monitor) and came across a lot of your work. If memory serves, the Museum of Modern Art had been selling Che Guevara watches, which caused you to write a column about “Che chic.” [It was the New York Public Library.] I wrote you a too-long e-mail, which you kindly responded to. Then you quoted me in a piece you wrote for the print magazine. That was it! I was a National Review reader from that point on.

Life has taken me a ways since then (I’m 42, married to a lawyer, and have two kids). But it’s fair to say a decent part of my early political life was shaped by reading National Review and having someone take the time to respond to an e-mail.

The Great Wide Web does not store everything, but it does have my piece “Che Chic: It’s très disgusting,” published in our December 31, 2004, issue: here.

A friend and reader from the Upper Midwest writes me from vacation in Hawaii, saying,

. . . here I am, sitting at the beach, hearing the Pacific waves, and doing the crossword puzzle, with Bruckner 8, mixing with the waves, in my earbuds.

To quote my grandmother: “That’s livin’.”

Thank you to one and all.