This blog is a kind of intellectual autobiography. My quests have been literary and historical, and have involved tracking down facts and fictions related to people and books. As you will see, I’ve chased facts about fictions, and fictions about facts.
Some of these quests have come to a conclusion, while others are still underway. Some have drawn me after them for 50 years, like narcotic scents I am powerless to resist. And I am not loyal to a single quest – my world is full of them. They often develop simultaneously, each in their own parallel dimension.
Some of the quests are the product of a personal struggle, while others have involved hundreds of people. Some only needed a library or a single bookcase, while others – in fact, most of them – took me around the globe.
Why go on such quests? Well, I just can’t help it. It’s a strange combination of unrestrained curiosity and an equally imperative desire for order – for “getting things right”, for knowing the truth about something, even though it may be a truth about fiction.
In this blog I will tell the complete stories of a series of quests. You may already know plenty about the people, characters, places and events that sparked my quests, but read on: I am only writing them down because they have turned up something completely new. And even if you know nothing about them, relax: the quests may be more interesting than their subjects – they certainly were, to me. I hope you enjoy them.
Quests 