In his collection of essays, A Temple of Texts, writer William Gass observed: “The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The True Alchemists”
The great writer William Gass published a book in 2006 called A Temple of Texts, and in it he annotated a list of the 50 books that have most influenced his thinking and work, and he writes about his first reaction to reading each. He wrote about Ben Johnson’s book The Alchemist, and I loved one of the lines in there.
He said, the true alchemists do not change lead into gold. They change the world into words.
Oh, that’s nice. That is a magical thing. I saw that when my son learned to read and write. For him, just writing his own name on a piece of paper was practically a magical spell.
Right. I’ve heard it described as giving someone wings, right?
Yeah, the power. Of course, he also learned to write words like poo, but that’s a different kind of power.
