There's a passage in this book that's been haunting me ever since I read it, now over a month ago, and I'm really not sure if I can convey why. Our protagonist, who has been living a life inside his head for too long, is with a well-meaning but clueless work colleague and he tries to communicate what it is that's bothering him. In a fundamental way. And even as he tries to tell Lou what's at the heart of the matter, Henry is all too aware of how far he is falling short. It's a mundane scene. A little grey and gloomy. An overcrowded city bus on a rainy afternoon. The passengers are in discomfort. Wet, crowded, wishing they were elsewhere. It's an unremarkable sliver of time. Henry watches as his big dopey friend Lou tips his hat in apology to a woman and in doing so, spills water on a man's newspaper. Observing this pale event, Henry wonders about the arbitrary nature of history. What gets immortalized. What gets left out and who decides.

 "At 4:34 on a wet November afternoon, Lou Engel boarded a city bus and spilled water from his hat brim on a man's newspaper, Is that history?" Then the follow up. "Who's writing it down?"