From William Hamilton, the eccentric genius whose new biography is on the way, and from our old neighbor David Quammen, who chronicled Bill's demise from the complications of malaria meds in his Spillover, review on deck at last...
Hamilton, from volume 3 of his collected works:
"For me it seems that the universe only needs to be beautiful, my 'science' no more consistent or less tragic than Antigone's story or her sculpted head."
And David's rejoinder, to a scientist collecting bat samples in Uganda in hopes of finding Marburg and Ebola:
"Wait a minute, lemme get this straight: You're in a cave in Uganda, surrounded by Marburg and rabies and black forest cobras, wading through a slurry of dead bats, getting hit in the face by live ones like Tippi Hedren in The Birds, and the walls are alive with thirsty ticks, and you can hardly breathe, and you can hardly see, and...you've got time to be claustrophic?"
More from both these sources coming.
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