And I felt even then, I think, some curiosity or affinity that I knew had the potential to deepen, though I was also aware, whenever I opened those books, of a vague dissatisfaction that arose from the knowledge they would stir in me of my own youthfulness, so that I would close them after a page or two, sensing that I’d return to them when I was older — not very much older, just whenever I no longer thought of myself as such a child. For all great novels, all works of art, communicate, even in their most mundane details, a refinement or intelligence that adolescents understand, but to which some can react, as I did, with a restlessness that is felt in the emotions, as if a maturity equal to that of the author is what is wanted, before one can meet the author in the arena of his or her virtuosity.