Those sticky notes—just as many thoughts as there are, and if not more than that—are also promises of thoughts: their embryos and roots. Mikhail Epstein arranged them in alphabetical order, giving the book the look of a small encyclopedia. An encyclopedia, by definition, that is infinitely open to expansion—any entry in its alphabet can be, if not endlessly, then nearly so: thematic boundaries are not set, and therefore it is inevitably not all-encompassing, which means incomplete. The task of encompassing, in some way, the conceivable “everything” becomes even less feasible. And so—its achievement can be endless.
And all of this is very, very Epstein-like.