Perhaps not

And yet these facts were largely incommunicable.  He spent his time among businessmen, not scholars.  He rarely invited people to dinner, and could be emphatic and monologic.  He tended to flourish his facts as querulous challenges rather than as invitations to conversation, though this wasn't perhaps his real intention.

James Wood
The New Yorker
November 7, 2011

There and back again

...as he got older and busier, he acquired far more books than he could read...  The acquisition of a book signalled not just the potential acquisition of knowledge but also something like the property rights to a piece of ground: the knowledge became a visitable place.

James Woods
The New Yorker
November 7, 2011